Religous Unique Units

I'm toying with the idea of creating additonal unique units based on your state religion to add some more differences to the religions. Ideally the UU will be appropriate for the era when the religion is founded but useful for a long enough period of time to be valuable. Since I'll be putting into my existing mod where I've addressed the rate at which units become obsolete I should be safe with anything that will last an era like many of the civilization UUs.

Unfortunately, my knowledge of religious history sucks. However at the same time I want to put in units that add gameplay value even if not entirely accurate.

Some ideas I have so far are:

Crusader (upgraded knight), perhaps only buildable in cities with Cathedrals or Castles? This would obviously work best for Christianity, perhaps they could even be available before standard knights in the tech tree (horseback riding, fuedalism & theology).

Monk (worker variant). A worker that can be built in cities with monastaries but doesn't freeze growth when built. Would only be able to build roads, farms, pastures, watermills and plantations. Cheaper to build and slightly slower work speeds. Might be helpful if they could also spread religion, perhaps they could replace missionary units for this religion?

Warrior Monk (for lack of a better name). An ancient era warrior with decent strength that can only defend and starts with the Medic I promotion. Only buildable at cities with monastaries. To prolong the usefulness of this unit, allow them to build a monastary improvement outside of cities. I think something that requires a hill feature and requres 1 food and 1 production on the tile would restrict the number that can be built in most cases. The actual improvement could do something like -1 food, -1 production and +4 commerce.

And that leaves three more unique units to come up with and 5 to assign to a religion. I'm debating with Islam in particular, should they get a modern era unit to reflect current times or a medevil era unit to balance out the crusaders? What religions would make the most appropriate use of the two monk ideas above? And what to do with Judiasm?

I'm stumped, any input would be greatly appreciated

Well, this would encourage the player to become a "religious front-runner." What I mean by this is that the player would convert to whatever religion would give him the military advantage for that time...

For example, let's say Islam recieves a unique unit for modern times... During the "middle ages" portion of the game the player would be Christian, and by the time that the Islamic UU became available, the player would convert to Islam. If each religion had their own UU then its quite possible that a player will have had every single religion as their state religion in one point of the game.

For example, let's say Islam recieves a unique unit for modern times... During the "middle ages" portion of the game the player would be Christian, and by the time that the Islamic UU became available, the player would convert to Islam. If each religion had their own UU then its quite possible that a player will have had every single religion as their state religion in one point of the game.

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Maybe and maybe not. I think if religion change is also covered here, like making a civ with multireligions more unhappy (but not free religion) and random removal of religons in theocracy etc., it should counter it. You could be severed crippled by the unhappiness in your empire if you try to spread another religion inside your borders, and it would be suicidecal if you tried something like this.

Btw. what UU should be giving to Islam in modern era? Suicide bombers? I think not! Maybe stick with medieval era.

Definately not suicide bombers or terrorists... I was thinking more along the lines of modern clerics. They'd have to be a potent UU later on though to offset the disadvantage of not being able to use them early in the game.

I'm not too worried about exploits right now, in fact I'd want that ability while testing It is a good point though and will need to be addressed once the UUs are in, working and balanced with each other. Ideally I would want some sort of requirement for adopting a state religion such as it being the most prominent religion in your civilization. As an easy alternative all of the units could require the holy city shrine to build them but then you'd have an even bigger advantage to founding the religions than you already do.

Now that I think about it, if Budism & Hinduism both have early era units, Taosim & Judiasm have classical era units and Christianity & Islam have medevil era units you could switch state religions but would have a hard time using all of the UUs. Other disadvanatges to switch your state religion could include altering religious buildings so they actually take away money, happiness or commerce if they aren't your state religion. Actually, that almost makes sense, I know that here in the US religious institutions receive a lot of tax breaks so in effect they are costing the government money, or at least they aren't making them any money. At any rate, that would give you the option of fully exploiting your state religion with all of the buildings it can use, or limiting the buildings you produce to lessen the penalty of switching religions.

Better yet, if we can get enough ideas, we may even be able to give each religion a UU for each different era so you wouldn't need to switch religions to have a UU available.

I think the Jewish UU should probably be chariot based -- Babylonian records are full of Hebrew names commanding the King's chariot armies. And maybe give them a city-raider benefit. Sodom, Gomorrah, Jericho, Jerusalem, the Old Testament is full of the downfall of cities.

I dunno about actual game ideas, but I can tell you my favorite war stories for some of the religions.

Hinduism: *The* defining moment, for me, is the Bhagavad Gita: King Arjuna is facing off against his mortal enemy -- who is also his not-so-distant family -- and suffers a moment of existential doubt. He thinks of all the men who would lose their lives and almost can't call the charge. But his chariot driver, Krishna (who, btw, was a God in disguise) decided to show him The Ultimate Reality. It's intense, and gives Arjuna the balls to order the charge and triumph in victory over his opponent.

Confucianism: Too many stories. Maybe when the enemy of Confucius' boss planned to have Confucius' boss killed by a pack of assassins posing as entertainers (Sword dancers) Confucius complained about the impropriety -- barbarian entertainments at a serious affair of state (The signing of an alliance between the two countries) -- and saved his boss's life. The enemy was so embarassed by his "lack of manners" (Confucius is very persuasive) that he gave up something like a half dozen cities to Confucius' boss as an apology. Or possibly when Confucius was besieged by an army and nearly starved to death, only for the army to find out they had thought Confucius was some other vagabond... and let him go. Then, there's the general thought that two of the arts required to be studied by a confucian gentleman are charioteering and archery, along with ritual, music, calligraphy, and math.

Whoa. Three religions, three references to charioteering. How about a break?

Taoism: The Battle of the Red Cliffs, during the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I'm doing this from memory, and I shouldn't, but, IIRC, Cao Cao's armies were on the north side of a river. His men were land lubbers, and he was not looking forward to a naval battle. So, to stabilize his boats, he chained them together. "Just like fighting on land!" The standard method to defeat this would be for the opposition on the south bank to push some burning ships into the river and let the wind carry them into the chained navy. But Cao Cao thought he was safe because the wind *always* blew from north to south at that time of year, so the fire boats couldn't approach.

But the south side, an alliance of Zhuge Liang and Liu Bei, had a Taoist wizard. He prayed for three days... and the wind changed. The fire boats were sent, and Cao Cao went up in flames. (Modern accounts leave out the wizardry, saying simply Zhuge Liang "Calculated" that the wind would change. Boring.)

Buddhism is hard. Buddhism has had its expansionary periods. Japan itself used Zen Buddhism as a tool for discipline in its expansionary period between the Meiji Restoration and the end of World War II. But there's no really cool stories to go with it. Maybe I just haven't studied it as intensively as the other religions.

Crusaders - How about Cathedral & Castle req? That'd require Music & Engineering techs, both fairly advanced for the early game. Plus the Cathedral would require at least 3 cities with Temples, so a bit of expansion would be required as well.

Monk - could simply add build options (if able) to the current missionary, to let them build a few improvements as you mentioned.

Warrior Monk - sounds about like the way many monastaries brew ales (or wines) in the real world. I'd suggest hill req, 1 food, 1 production, and giving +food & +commerce - random info I found on the web:

Elder Ephraim, a disciple of Elder Joseph the Hesychast, having restored and repopulated four Mt. Athos monasteries and having established several men’s and women’s monastic communities throughout Greece and North America, transferred six Athonite monks to the Sonoran Desert to start a new monastery. Upon their arrival the fathers began with the necessary construction work, building first the main church, living quarters for the monks, the dining hall, and guest facilities. A vegetable garden, a small vineyard, citrus orchards, and an olive grove dot the landscape. An elaborate system of gardens, pathways, and gazebos with Spanish fountains truly render the monastery and its extensive grounds an oasis in the desert.

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Trappist monastaries also have a long tradition of making & selling beer & cheese - just enough to support themselves, I think. Chimay is a well known & very good ale.

Hmm... one UU per era would work, I could skip the ancient era entirely which would leave Buddhist, Hindu, Confusionist, Taoist and Jewish for classical and then all six for the remaining four eras although in reality the industrial & modern eras could probably use the same UU. A more powerful chariot unit (or even several of them) would be kind of cool since as they stand right now chariots are pretty worthless. Or perhaps one military unit for a single era for each religion and then a second (like the monk describe above) that would be usable in all other eras. I would think a military unit for the era when a religion can be founded, or the immediate following era, would make sense.

Hmm, the thought of a chariot that can still be used effectively while everyone else is running around with swordsmen, axemen & spearmen is interesting.

So how does this sound for a rough idea...

Buddhist - First UU, some sort of specialized swordsman (copper).

Hindu - First UU, a tougher chariot on par or slightly better than horse archers (copper & horse).

Jewish - First UU, another improved chariot that would essentially be like a swordsman with double movement (iron & horse).

Confusionism - First UU, an archer that sits about half way between an early archer and a longbowman. A chariot archer would be cool but not currently possible without new models & animations.

Taosim - First UU, a galley with a cargo capacity of 3 and the ability to bombard city defenses, about 1/2 of what a catapult can do.

Christianity - First UU, a crusader knight variant (iron & horse).

Islam - First UU, upgraded horse archer or another horseman (horse).

The initial UU would then become obsolete and replaced with the monk/cleric UU after a period of time long enough for the players to build the early UUs and hopefully use them. For example, since Buddism is founded with meditation, their warrior would be replaced by their monks when the player discovered civil service. The ancient era religions will need their units to be useful through the classical era if they require monestaries or temples to build them otherwise they may not have enough time to build them. Most of the early units last until the medevil era anyway, with the only real exception being warriors.

The problem is that it's almost impossible to stop religions from flowing into your borders before theocracy, so every civ can easily have every religion in them.

If you made these units available based on religious BUILDINGS (i.e temples, monstries..) then virtually any city can build these buildings and thus these special units

I've been trying to do something but not sure if it's possible: to limit the effect of religious buildings so that they only work when they match with your state religion. There's no point of buddhist temples generating happiness when your state religion is judaism! I know how this could be accomplished with happiness (coz it's the case with the cathedral), but not with other factors yet

Do you know..?

The whole plan would be that you can only build them when that is your state religion and they would require a religious building in the city that wanted to build them. So yes, you could have every religion in your empire, but only one of them would be your state religion. That only leaves the issue of making it undesireable to swap state religions so you can't constantly switch when you want a different unit or even all of them at once. I'll probably need to dive into the dreaded python code when I get to that point.

I'll look for an answer to that second part after I eat

First: how would you make it only possible to build them when ur adopting a certain religion? I think it's either <bPrereqReligion> or <StateReligion> right?

Second: Once we force them to have the state religion to build the buildings, the next step would be to a mod which forces a civ to stick to its state religion for, say, 300 turns. I haven't figured that one yet either

Third: Where do buildings allow units anyway?? I think only techs and resources allow units no?

Fourth: Finish eating quickly coz I really need that line of cancelling buddhist temples effects in a jewish state!

Ok, in the buildings you can specify: <StateReligionCommerces/> which I haven't tested but it should work just like the regular commerce effects of buildings. Since you have each temple as a separate building you can specify their commerce effect individualy, so a Jewish Temple would only provide possitive effect when the state religion was Judiasm.

For the units, they can also have a prereq religion & building, a good existing example is the missionaries which require monastaries. The trick is that the requirement is with the unit, it's not an ability given to the building.

You can increase religious anarchy times, they're pretty low right now but I imagine if the anarchy was 10 turns or so you wouldn't have many people switching unless they really wanted too. Otherwise, as far as I can tell it definately needs to be scripted.

I can't find where can you re-define religious anarchy without moving the effect into civics anarchy too, by modding the time file

You're wronf about the StateReligionCommerces though, coz it only exists in the spiral minaret which gives +1 gold from all state-religion buildings

So, adding this to an Islamic temple for instance, would make that temple gain +1 gold (or research, or culture) from all Islamic buildings! (in case your state religion was Islam).. doesn't make alot of sense

Durr, one other thing I meant to mention - it'd be very limited, but you could design a special worker or building, that would allow certain UU's, and give it to the founder of a religion. It'd give some incentive to racing the religious techs, though, so that'd probably need some tweaking.

hmmm good idea! The building is already the holy city (in the xml it's defined as a building), and we can allow each to build a UU like the monstry
Edit: It's the shrine that's in the buildings not the holy city

But the main problems remain:
1) Only the holy city can build them
2) Any civ which converts to that religion wouldn't be able to build them

Conclusion: We need some attributes to a building that could be built into EACH city of that civ, like a temple, but we must limit its effects to the state-religion civ only.

I have a feeling I'm going to be horribly disappointed with what does and doesn't work once I start testing out more of these variables you can define. I've already found a number of them that don't work quite as you would expect.

The good news is in GlobalDefines.xml ...

Thanks Seven but still, if we make them TOO long then it'd be hard for a civ to even switch for No Religion to a specific religion, hmm

Seven05 said:

The whole plan would be that you can only build them when that is your state religion and they would require a religious building in the city that wanted to build them. So yes, you could have every religion in your empire, but only one of them would be your state religion.

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Assets\XML\Buildings\CIV4BuildingInfos.xml

I didn't see any with a StateReligion prereq used, but the shrine required HolyCity, and the standard religious buildings required ReligionType.

Looks like the same setup with units as well.
Assets\XML\Units\CIV4UnitInfos.xml (from the missionary section)

Why not add a new building in where you train the UU, that building would require that its religon is the state religon (perhapse in free religon only one of those for every religon) it would also require let say in your own empire: 6 tempels, 2 cathedrals, and 6 or 7 monastries, and, (I am not realy sure about this point yet) the shirne of the religon must have been build(anywhere), after all those things are build you can build 2 buildings and 2 more for each 6 tempels, 2 cathedrals, and 6 or 7 monastries, not 1 more for 3 tempels, 1cathedrals, and 3 or 3.5 monastries. The problem with this are the early religons Hinduisme, Buhdisme and Jewidisme, because these are founded much before music, so or change something for those religons or make their UU's strong enough to be usefull after music.

This was just an idea, if you don't like it let me know i while try to change it.

Fachy said:

The problem is that it's almost impossible to stop religions from flowing into your borders before theocracy, so every civ can easily have every religion in them.

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Has that been your experience? I find the spread rate drops sharply after the first religion hits a city, so if you aren't mass producing missionaries, getting every religion in every city can be a real challenge.

I mean, you could theoretically build new, empty cities next to target religions that the AI created (Unless you're proposing to discover all 7 yourself?) in the hopes that it will spread into your civ, but otherwise you're at the mercy of the AI's missionaries for collecting all the religions.