[MOD] SD Religion

(Previously posted on Apolyton)

This mod splits off all religions from their original technologies into their own. For example, if you research Meditation, you now have to spend an additional turn or two to research Buddhism... if you want that religion.

Once ANY civilization, including the barbarians, researches a religion tech, that tech is freely given to all other surviving civilizations behind the scenes, so you can't research it anymore. There's no point!

You may not have noticed, but this mod has a nice side benefit. If you are a modder, can use use this as a basis for expanding the tech tree as you see fit, without juggling with religion.

There is one additional bonus feature. If you want to simulate a basic religion war, you can 'cheat' and give your (and other) civ a missionary unit to start with. Use that unit to spread religion to your first city - this act founds the religion and sets that city as the holy city.


History
=-=-=-=

v1.00 - Initial Release
v1.01 - Dropped 'Tech' from the mod's name.
Tidied, rebuilt the python scripts.
Implemented easy merging structure.
NO FUNCTIONAL CHANGES.
v1.10 - Uses SdToolKit.

Stone-D said:

There is one additional bonus feature. If you want to simulate a basic religion war, you can 'cheat' and give your (and other) civ a missionary unit to start with. Use that unit to spread religion to your first city - this act founds the religion and sets that city as the holy city.

Click to expand...

Ahh, excellent. I have a civ in my mod that has the unique feature of starting with a religion, but when I gave them the religion tech to start the game with, it would take 7-8 turns before the religion was actually founded. I hadn't thought of giving them a missionary for the religion, but that works even better since that means that every player in a MP game who picks that civ will start with the religion (even if only one has the holy city).

LOL, I can just imagine the mad click-scramble to be the owner of the holy city.

The holy city for the Blood Cult isn't really all that useful. The religion itself provides no bonuses (not even culture) unlike the other, must-be-researched religions, and the Shrine doesn't give gold income, merely increases the production speed of Blood Cult units. Blood Cult also only spreads through missionaries - it's really hard to convince people to worship a diety that's going to devour their souls.

I had to balance giving a free instant religion to a single civ, which meant making it more of a thematic thing than a powerful feature like the other religions. It's intended to give Tihuan a nice early game boost but to slowly lose its value as new techs and religions are introduced.

Hmmmmm... the idea of a blood cult religion has sparked a deluge of offshoot ideas in my brain.

- What would the impact be on another city's happiness if its border touched that of a blood-cult infected city?

- 'Build' a 'Mass Sacrifice' multi-shot wonder near a civ's borders and watch that civ a) take a hit in happiness, b) decreased war weariness c) drastically reduced production and d) general hostility.

- Blood Temples don't improve your culture... they negate a neighbouring city's culture bonus.

Hmmm, the aztecs might turn out to be fun to play after all... and with christian units getting a combat bonus against them...

wow, this is great. not only is this more realistic, but this will help facilitate another project that i have been considering regarding the randomization of religions, as long as the religions remain generic.

Yeah, if I can manage it, Blood Cult is going to have a lot of thematic stuff like that. It'll have a negative diplo hit for everyone that isn't Blood Cult (in addition to the heathen penalty), it has unit sacrifices for blood rite spells to create some of the religion units, it can "capture" enemy units to use as blood slaves (which causes a minor rep hit when they're sacrificed), etc.

I'm trying to make each religion interesting with options like that, but still be balanced. It's a hard job.

I've been posting this question everywhere! Does anyone know how to prevent civs from switching religions to say, 200 turns instead of 5?

Can't, AFAIK, without the SDK.

It's not in the xml?
I don't know anything about this SDK

Fachy said:

I don't know anything about this SDK

Click to expand...

Software Development Kit (SDK). I didn't know what it was either, and nobody seemed to be talking when I asked, so I went and hunted it down. It will allow a higher level of modability to the game, however, from what I've read, it appears that it will be still limited to a certain degree.

It will be interesting to see just how modable the game really turns out to be. Right now, it seems that you could do more with CIV3 than you can with CIV4 unless you know xml or python, which I don't

Still, looking forword to the seeing the sdk - anyone have any idea when they plan on releasing it?

~Oreg.

Thanks for the explanation, Oregano.

What I personally am anticipating is a separation of core AI / Gameplay elements to a dedicated DLL (Dynamically Linked Library) file or files. Things that benefit greatly from being compiled (as opposed to interpreted, like python) would be in here.

The SDK should have the elements needed to build this DLL - source files, headers, etc - but will probably not include what you'll need to actually *Make* the dll... a software development environment. C++ for example, though that is what I would anticipate.

At the moment these core elements are contained within the 11 meg civilization4.exe. If Firaxis do as I said above, a patch will be released alongside the SDK which will see a new DLL (or more) sitting in the root directory and civilization4.exe will have shrunk down to 2 or 3 megs.

Ideally (hopefully Firaxis reads this!) the 'new' engine will support multiple DLLs, otherwise we'll be in a worse hell than we are in now with merging python mods.

Ideally, the new engine will allow you to activate any number of mods and - most importantly - arrange them in priority.

Lets say you have selected these mods :

1 Civilization4\Mods\AdvancedAI
2 Civilization4\Mods\APAC
3 Civilization4\Mods\Piracy
4 Civilization4\Mods\RealAI

Do elements of (1) and (4) clash? What happens? What if, in that case, you would prefer the functionality of (4)? By ordering them as 4, 1, 2, 3 you can state that "If 1 and 4 clash, use 4."

It is because of this that I believe it will be a long while yet until we see this SDK, if it even appears. I have my doubts... but Firaxis seems to be well behaved with regards to post-sales support, unlike a number of other dev houses I wouldn't care to mention.

The SDK is already done or nearly done. The beta testers had access to it in beta. The delay is almost certainly for documentation and final debugging.

Well bugger me backwards with a rabid ewok. Now THAT is pleasant news.

Pah, I thought it was pleasant news when civ was released on 25th oct instead of 30nov or something, but look how it turned out to be for version 1.00!!!

Quick question, how hard would it be to modify this so a religion was not founded by simply researching the tech? Instead, if you knew the required technology (Meditation for example) there would be a random chance per turn that you would receive a (Buddhist in this example) Missionary. Only one missionary would be given out but being the first to discover the tech would not always mean you would be the one to found the religion.

Just once I'd like to see somebody other than me, Spain or India found most of the religions.

I reckon you'd need the sdk for any real fun with religions. My possibly-workable idea without the sdk would be to generate a 'prophet' type, who is under nobody's control. He appears in the lands of whoever discovers the tech, then wanders around cities until he decides to settle down and build a holy city.

This final city may not be in your lands... he can go wherever he pleases.

I was hoping for much more modest changes to make realistic religions but it seems so impossible with the xml

Guys, there are 2 lines which are all set to NONE and 0 in all buildings:
<bPrereqReligion>0, <StateReligion>NONE
Now, one of them means you must have that specified religion as a state religion to build the building. Anyone has an idea what does the other line does?

Just the thing I needed. Great mod.