Greek Pantheon Mod - brainstorming

[Navan]

So I've fiddled with XML some and now feel ready to get my feet wet with something more substantial. The idea for this mod is to completely replace the current religions with individual god(desse)s of the Greek pantheon. The base religion model won't change much, if at all - however, the effects of each religions building will be vastly different from god to god. For example, Poseidon's temples will give +1 commerce on water and +4 water XP, where Apollo's temple grants a free artist and +1 health. This will continue for the more advanced religious buildings. I would also like to institute a UU for each religion, either innate to the religion itself or unlocked via advanced buildings.

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Ok, so 7 religions isn't hardcoded, I get the picture
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Aphrodite - goddess of love and fertility
Founding Tech: Pottery
Temple: +1 happiness, +10% food (similar to Granary)
Cathedral: +2 happiness, +15% food (again similar to Granary, cumulative)
Comments: Meant to grow your cities quickly and enable you to actually keep them happy With the temple, cathedral, and a Granary you should get +75% food total, or 4x base growth rate. Would pair very well with +health from Apollo. I think it may be necessary to swap her tech to Polytheism if giving her at the same time as Pottery makes her overpowered with granaries.

Apollo - god of music and medicine
Founding Tech: Priesthood
Temple: Free artist, +1 health
Cathedral: +25% culture (cumulative with +50% base), +2 health
Comments: Very expansionist. Big cities, big borders is the idea. Set at priesthood since the Oracle is, well, the oracle of Apollo and also to help balance very early game culture rushing that he'd enable. Still think he may be a little bit too early for that, will need playtesting.

Ares - god of war
Founding Tech: Horseback Riding
Temple: +2 unit xp, -50% war weariness
Cathedral: Free Combat I upgrade, +25% military unit production
Comments: Placed 2 techs deep in the tree to delay early game rushing. The 2 free xp is enough to bump straight to level 3 with barracks, or with theo + vassalage. I think the war weariness bonus is balanced, as my early game wars rarely last that long and late game ones can be more easily ameliorated with lots of luxuries and the culture slider. Very good for a warmonger obviously, useless to anyone else.

Athena - goddess of wisdom (and war)
Founding Tech: Writing
Temple: 1 free scientist, +10% science
Cathedral: +25% science, +50% defense
Comments: Placed at writing to balance the free specialist potential for science rushing. A civ with her could get science going very fast; one of the reasons the 2nd bonus on the cathedral is relatively subpar. That and I was trying to think of a way to tie in her martial side. Other ideas for the second bonus would be good.

Hephaestus - god of the forge
Founding Tech: Iron Working
Temple: 1 free engineer, +25% defense
Cathedral: +25% production, 1 extra happiness from gold, silver, gems
Comments: I almost think he should be placed at metal casting, as though there weren't already enough incentive to rush through to iron working. Engineers particularly are hard to get at this stage of the game, which explains again the subpar secondary as with Athena above. The same reasoning goes for the cathedral's second bonus. I may consider adding an unhealthiness penalty to the cathedral as well, perhaps improving the 2nd bonus if so. The defense bonus is supposed to represent improved armor for troops without making him into an aggressive god.

Poseidon - god of the sea
Founding Tech: Sailing
Temple: +1 commerce on water squares, +4 xp for water units
Cathedral: +1 food on water squares, free Navigation I upgrade
Comments: Hard one to balance this one is. Poseidon buildings may only be built on the waterfront. Because of this I have made them better than the rest. I want Poseidon to be balanced for a medium sea level continents game, so naturally he'd be better on archipelago and worse on pangaea. Comments on this one are especially needed.

Zeus - king of the gods
Founding Tech: Monotheism
Temple: -50% maintenance costs, 1 free specialist of any type
Cathedral: Government center, +10% great people points
Comments: Kinda hard to think of what to put for Zeus. I decided to focus on the rulership side of things. I've not been impressed at all with either courthouses or the Organized trait, which is why I've pushed Zeus so far into their territory. If anyone can argue otherwise I'll scale him back The free specialist and GPP bonus is supposed to represent improved leadership. The GPP boost seems possibly a little low, 25-50% might be OK.



I would also like to include Hades, Demeter, Hermes, and Artemis if there is a way around the limit. I know this is leaving some of the gods out but it's difficult to think of Civ-style bonuses for the others.

I'm not sure about how to approach monasteries, shrines, and UUs yet. I do know that I don't really like the way shrines are currently handled, at least not in this context. Since the variety of bonuses you can grant with a religion in itself are fairly narrow (at least without the SDK), I may just have the shrine of a religion grant the religion's global bonuses, if it's your state religion. Instead of UUs I may just grant a unique upgrade to make them relevant throughout all tech levels. And monasteries, I dunno. May just cut them out entirely.

Also, I want to include some kind of limiter on a city having multiple religions to prevent multi-religion super cities. A hard limit, of say 3, with the capacity to 'manually' remove a religion if necessary could work. Failing that I want to put in some kind of severe penalty, such that 1 religion is great, 2 is manageable, 3 is painful and 4+ impractical. Not sure how to go about that just yet. I'm not sure if happiness would work since Aphrodite counters that and with hereditary rule you can just pile on the police.

At this point I don't want to change the tech tree itself, or the civics or anything like that. However that may prove necessary, as noted with the hereditary rule example just above.

Anyways, if anyone has ideas, suggestions, comments, whatever PLEASE say so! I'd like to see how much interest there is in this

[woodelf]

Sounds ambitious and I look forward to trying it out when it gets done!

The UUs could be a problem, at least until new units start coming out. In the beginning you might simply need to use your imagination and rename units something mythological just so you can playtest.

I'd like to see what you come up with multiple Gods per city. I don't know how ancient Greece handled it either.

Good luck

[Navan]

Yeah, for UU's it's either going to be renamed / possibly recolored existing units, or just using the unique upgrade method. I haven't seriously looked into the latter yet, so I'm not sure how easy it is.

[woodelf]

Keep us posted since I love mythology. If you need anything tested PM me or post it here, no matter how small. Once people start playing the ideas will pour in....

[CivCinque]

This would be a great first step towards a mod dealing with the ancient greek world. What about adding some new "civs" or greek factions. This could be played on a non wrapping map of the ancient greek world, possibly including parts of Asia Minor and Italy, especially Sicilly.

[Voyelles]

I think you should consider giving Poseidon bonuses regarding horse units too.

[Navan]

CivCinque: That has occurred to me. However, I don't know much about Greek history apart from the big stuff. If someone that is would like to put together a map and civs or something that'd be cool

Voyelles: For the horses, I'm considering having one of the effects of shrines being that they perpetually supply you with certain resources. For Hephaestus his shrine would always provide copper and iron, for Poseidon horses. Want to get the more basic buildings tweaked first though.

[Arcys]

Zeus is also the god of travellers and the market you may want to consider some econ bonuses.

[Navan]

I'm kinda holding out to give those sorts of bonuses to Hermes if it's possible to work in more religions or to do minor religions somehow. If not... there's a decent chance. I would like to see the economy void filled.

[Zurai]

You can have more than 7 religions (it's not hard coded at all). The only issue is that you have to mess with the python for the national religion screen (because the column widths are set up to provide enough space for 7 religions) and you'd have to add new icons to the icon files and XML sheets.

[Navan]

Oooh, cool... Yeah, the religions screen will have to be messed with in some way because so far, when I title each religion as "The Cult of <name>" they overlap all to hell. That and the religions screen seems pretty senseless anyway.

As far as icons go, I want to make some similar to the ones used for astrology, color coded in a fitting way. Right now the substitution is:

Zeus - Judaism
Hephaestus - Christianity
Aphrodite - Islam
Apollo - Buddhism
Athena - Confucianism
Ares - Taoism
Poseidon - Hinduism

Actually, this brings to mind a flaw that's popped up with my current testing. In the following screenshot, the tech Sailing has the same icon as Polytheism + Hindu icon. This same sort of flaw sometimes shows up elsewhere, for example Writing's icon shows up as Code of Laws + Confucianism icon. In the first case Sailing gives Poseidon which uses the Hindu icon, and Writing gives Athena which uses the Confucianist icon... but I didn't change any files relating to the techs themselves! That and it's not always consistent... Some of them show up fine, and all of them show up fine on the tech tree itself, it's just the bar at the top of the screen and the "Which tech do you want to research now?" popup. I have seen that Polytheism will show up correctly, plain, when it's available.

Anyways here's the screenie:

[bky1701]

Ummm, there is no limit to the number of religions. I have 8 in a mod I made. All you have to do is add one to the XML file. But there is one problem; adding more then 8 will make some invisible on the State Religion window (even 8 will get a bit messed up, no state is pushed to the side a lot), you will need to change the python scripts to fix this.

[Voyelles]

Just another little suggestion if i may.

Having Olives as a ressource (luxury? health?), and granting Athena shrines appropriate bonuses.

[Navan]

Oooh, olives would be cool, yes... what do you think? +1 food +1 gold, extra +2 gold with, uh.... what do you call an olive farm? Luxury or health resource? Think maybe the same tech as Winery? Well, that would be for a more comprehensive Greek mod, right now it's just religions.

Anyways, working all weekend, will plug away at it when I get the chance

[vbraun]

As I understand it the limit of 7 religions is either hardcoded or requires the SDK to change, so for now here's the members of the pantheon, along with their traits:

No, absolutly not. You can have as much as you want, wether it be 2 or 50,000. But as you add more it will be harder and harder to add.