[MOD] *Very* Realistic Religions - Ready!

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Fachy

Prince
Joined
Aug 13, 2005
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393
Location
Egypt
Compatible with v1.52
NOTE: THE FILE HAS BEEN UPDATED @ 30 Dec, 11 PM GMT to prevent Cathedrals from being built except @ their state religions

Also updated @ 2 Jan 8 AM GMT to fix an error where Xian temples gave sadness from wine not vice versa

Based on AbbaMouse's Realistic Religions mod, I really didn't like tying everything to temples, so as when a city builds multiple-temples it has multiple effects and more happiness. This mod handles this problem, gives more of a special flavor to each religion, and also grants slightly more advantages to later religions since they cost more for research.

So if you want to see fewer but smarter Jews, more and less war-weary Moslems, less technologically advanced but culture-oriented Hindus and much more, keep reading!

Disclaimer: I don't mean to insult/criticize any religions here. This mod is based on my imagination and knowledge (which happens to be very poor regarding East Asian religions, being an Egyptian). I also added some cute musical alternatives for about 6-7 sounds

As a general rule for the mod: Temples are only effective when existing under their relative religions. Exceptions for that are culture (which makes sense), and Confucian temple (because Confucism is a philosophy, so it can co-exist with any religion). The way I forced Moslems and Jews not to eat pigs and Moslems not to drink wine..etc using their temples caused that; cities with these temples cannot convert back, or they'd be shut down till they re-convert to these religions. Islamic & Jewish temples cause -100 unhappiness, countered by +103 happiness @ that temple's state religion, which makes sense since there has never been a massive converting out of Islam or Judiasm. Also, the Globe Theater has been modified to give +50 happiness instead of no unhappiness, to prevent it from being abused to that temples' thingy.

Civics:
Becuase there's a bug which gives any city all the traits of the religions existing in it if that civ has has no-state-religion, I had to do something to:
1) Prevent many religions from existing in a city
2) Make life hard for the ones choosing the Free-religion civic

That's why any non-state-religion will cause +2 :mad: in a city, while state religion will cause +4 :) counter-balancing that effect --> to encourage civs to adopt religions. Also note that the CIVICS file contains less merits for enviromentalism (+3 health not 6, -5% gold & research), all gov types can hurry gold except despotism, and fascism can hurry population. Sorry they're irrelevant but I was too lazy to remove them (coz I use them in my mod) :p. Also Free religion doesn't give 10% research bonus (I mean, why??), and it takes 3 culture points from each of your cities/turn! Not only that, but Free Religion causes +1 happiness per non-state religion (which causes -2 happiness remember?) So it's a desperate solution for nations with 15 religions/city or something to soften the bad effect of multiple religions in 1 city. Also you cannot build missionaries without monastries anymore.

Monasteries:
All monastries give +5% research, except Islamic/Jewish = +10%, Hindu = +0%. This lessens the benefits from switching religions and building their monastries. You must have the religion a state religion in order to build its monastry, except for the hindu one. I personally use a mod to increase religious-switching anarchy to ~10 turns to make it even harder to switch religions. I suggest you do the same

Now the really cool thing about missionaries is this: Hindu monastery becomes obsolete by monothiesm (what, only 1 God exists??). Jewish monestry obselete by theology (omg, the Massaiah has arrived!). That addition solved the problem of us wanting to limit those religions from spreading, yet they can safely arrive to all their founders' cities (as in real life)

Temples:
Only Islamic/Jewish temples can be built @ state religion. Base temple happiness is 3 (to make up for the lack of temples' effect, since you can only live with 1 effective instead of potentially 7), but these 3 :) are only provided @ state religion of course.

Cathedrals
Can only be built @ state religion (of the given cathedral)

Missionaries:
Islamic & Tao: Nothing stops the faithful Moslem (Da3eya) from letting the world know about the word of God, no terrain costs.
Christian: It's very easy to convert people to Christianity in every part of the world. Costs 20 shields only, 3 movements/turn.
Buddhist: There's nothing such as a buddhist missionary! Replaced that with a high spread rate
Rabbi, Confucian, & Hindu missionary: It's really hard to spread religions at these old days eh? 1 movement only. Rabbi costs 50 shields, while Hindu missionary costs only 30 (remember 30 is expensive considering it's an early religion found at small forgless cities, and shall quickly be obselete by monothiesm)

Spread rates (original is 100):
Judaism & Hinduism: 10 (shouldn't spread after their obseletion)
Xianity: 50
Confucism: 100
Islam & Taoism: 140
Buddhism: 200 (no missionary remember?)

SHRINES:
Jewish shrine cannot be caught (Nabukhath Nusr!). It provides gold for its owner (foreign Jews helping their state)
Christian shrine brings gold (indulgence money), obselete with Scientific method of course :)
Islamic shrine brings gold (pilgrimage)
Hindu shrine brings gold (hindus give jewellery to their Mahraja?)
All other shrines don't bring gold.

Culture/Holy city, culture/city, and cities: (original is 4 & 1)
Note that any third value is only effective when that city has the religion AND it's the state religion (exception if the no-state-religion bug which I talked about earlier)
Jewish: 10 & 5 (Jews have a very significant culture)
Hindu: 12 & 3 (but OOPS), -1 research/city!. Also holy city brings 1 more culture from each city hinduism enters (like gold). Very useful for expanding borders early in the game, better than CREATIVE trait!
Confucism: unchanged & unchanged. +1 research/city
Taoism: unchanged & unchanged. +5 research/city. Holy city brings 1 more research as it spreads (like hindu's culture). This was illustrated by my virtual Tao scientists meeting every year to discuss new enlightment ideas - bleh
Islamic, Christian, & Buddhist all unchanged.

----> Note that all these values are base values. That is, as far as I know, are multiplied with markets/banks/libraries etc etc

RELIGIONS:
Ok I'm sure everyone has been like "ok ok what the <snip> has changed with the religions? get on with it :mad:" There you go, temples:

Islamic: -1 health from pigs, -1 :) from wine (if you have these resources, your cities with Islamic temples will be unchanged because it'll be +1 & -1, so better use them for trade!). +1 health from sheep & cow. Also stores 20% of food after growth (Islam is the fastest growing religion on earth), 3 XP points to military units (think suicide bombers), -150% war weariness! Moslems just love to fight heathens!
Jewish: -1 health from pig, crab, clam (I didn't know crab & clam was forbidden in the jewish creed, I copied this from abbamouse's mod :p). +1 health from cow, sheep, & fish. -50% food kept after growth (yup, Jews aren't so many), -50% military unit production (nor are their armies morally strong), BUT +50% research, and +3 trade routes/city! If you decide to be Jewish, don't adopt mercentalism! I wanted to give - war weariness for jews too, but I thought that 1/2 of the society will be upset because they depend mainly on trade routes (which are now closed by war)
Christian: +1 happiness from wine. Also the Christian temple provides +6 happiness (@ state religion of course), this shows the Christian tolerance to other creeds (err... pre 9/11)
Buddhist: +4 happiness (instead of base 3, read 3rd paragraph)
Hindu: +3 happiness (normal)
Confucian: +3 happiness in state religion cities, but +1 :mad: if built under other state religion (what? we're listening to that heathen's teachings??). Confucius was a man of war, so +3 XP/unit
Tao temple: unchanged

Units:
Same problem, too lazy to remove; workboat, great artist, & great merchant are all capturable.

Altered names:
For anti-blasphemous reasons (I'm a Moslem), I ultered the name of "Great Prophet" to "Great Religious Guy", I also exchanged the names of Moses & Abu Bakr with other names. Islamic Missionary is called Da3eya, Jewish Missionary called Rabbi, and Confucian Missionary called Confucian Teacher

I might have forgotten to mention any other minor changes. If you catch any, please let me know. Also I welcome any suggestions / comments / complains / praises :D But please please please, don't post till you have read/skimmed the previous posts! I try to reply to each message and it's frustrating to have people repeat the same things over and over again

It took me a great deal of effort to write this text and to make sure everything is working fine. The reason I felt obliged to post that mod, beside wanting to look like a smart guy of course, was to repay the benefits that I've made from this site, which has made this mod possible.

Acknowledgments:
Abbamouse: I based my mod on his, stolen many ideas!
Gr3y, & the guys who explained how to mod time and how to mod religion XMLs (sorry I don't remember their nicks!)
Anyone who've answered a question for me on this forum

Deleted for discussing moderator actions.
 

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I can't say I'm terribly fond of these changes. The game takes one extreme of making religions more of a collectors item and this seems to take another extreme in keeping nations strictly mono-theistic, removing/reducing the benefits of religions, reducing the ability to use missionaries, ect. I like that you added flavor to the religions (though some religions could be considered to be given an unfair bonus/penalty), but given how religion is already a bit of a gamble... I can't say I'm terribly fond of being locked into whatever religion I can secure for my civilization.
 
My conceptual objections from the other thread still apply, as do my comments on appropriate bonuses for Judaism. Two things that wasn't covered in the other thread:
Fachy said:
Jewish: . . . -50% food kept after growth (yup, Jews aren't so many), -50% military unit production (nor are their armies morally strong)
Religious Jews tend to have lots of children. I know many families with six or seven children or more, some with over ten children. This is a demographic problem for secular Jews in Israel—they're currently the most influential political faction, but they reproduce at a much lower rate than both Israeli Arabs and charedim, so both of those groups are steadily catching up. I suspect there's not a bad chance of Israel becoming a borderline theocracy within fifty years or so.

The other issue with this is that Jews are not in any way pacifistic. They fight. From Biblical times onwards, Jews have been surprisingly determined warriors.

The Bible, of course, describes all sorts of overwhelming Israelite victories against the Canaanites and some later powers. This was followed by a centuries-long decline in Jewish power, but then the Maccabean Revolt overthrew the crumbling Seleucid Empire's hold on them, and the Maccabees defended themselves against periodic Seleucid and Ptolemaic attacks for about a century. Finally the Romans conquered Judea, only for it to become one of their most rebellious provinces. The Jews revolted time after time, multiple legions had to be stationed in Judea, and finally the Romans got fed up, destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, and banned large religious gatherings.

Then, eventually, came the State of Israel. No offense to Egypt, but Israel is a regional superpower. Israel has won six wars against the Arabs, at least one (the 1948 war) without substantial aid from the U.S. Yeah, okay, its high-tech armament is assisted greatly by American aid, but regardless of the source, it's a power to be reckoned with, and it seems like your mod would cause Jews to be crushed militarily by anyone else.
 
I like abbamouse's version. It's fun and playable and works with 1.52. I read through your description and quite frankly it seems a bit dreary. Perhaps it's just a reflection of your world view.
 
For the Jews being a nation of 3000-4000 years old, and their current global number standing at ~15 million I do think you have some wrong statistics here!

Remeber that the Jews had the support of the UK since 1917 (Balfour declaration to give them a homeland in Palestine, which was a British colony at the time) till about 1936. Anyway illustrating their power in the game would make more sense to me via "hurry production" (they got the moneys!)

Cyber: Abba's version had alot of logical mistakes, which the game normally had. Such as -and I mentioned them before on 2 threads- giving more potential happiness/culture/research to cities with more religions, when reality is the opposite. My mod limits that to a big extent
 
Generally speaking - it's a good idea to spice up the religions thread, but I've got one NEGATIVE comment - doin' some temples or monasteries obsolete, and thus killing some religions is absolutely historically false, reducing many alternate world evolution in game and (last but not least) - just unfair. And why Islam is the final religion ??? Just because you're a Muslim ??? I mean no offense towards you, but there's something wrong with it, IMVHO...

Shortly speaking - I suggest to remove other religions temples becoming obsolete feature.

Another point is the religious bonuses - many of them are too punitive, I think. It's perfectly ok to give penalties for pigs & wine etc. for religions, which forbid using them, it's ok to adjust spreading rate and missionaries, depending on religion, but why culture decrease for free religion ??? Should be increase, that's obvious, I think. Why not cutting some temples/monastery bonuses or war weariness in this particular civic instead ?

Like Simetrical wrote - I agree there shouldn't be military bonuses/penalties depending on religion - these should depend on civics, IMO. Maybe adding more civics related to religion would be a good idea ?

Concluding - I suggest to give up the idea of obsolete temples and missionaries, not decreasing culture because of religion type, but adding more civics related to religion (some of them even should desrease culture if there's a non-state religion) instead, no military build rate changes or war wearines bonuses depending on religion TYPE, but managing them through civics too.
 
Fachy said:
Simetrical: For the Jews being a nation of 3000-4000 years old, and their current global numbers standing at ~15 million I do think you have some wrong statistics here!

Fachy, the unfortunate problem here is that in our world, the one we are currently living on and which our reality encompases, Judaism had three crushing moments:

1 - Jews believing in Jesus and his followers, converted to the earliest form of Christianity with the help of the Roman Empire.

2 - The Prophet Muhammad with the help of his followers after his death converted a significant number of Arabic speaking people who had been, if not fully, then partially raised on the on the Jewish traditions. The first Muslims were not all "godless heathens", having had to come from somewhere. Compare parts of the Pentateuch and the Qur'an, but be careful about asking questions. :(

3 - A large number of European Jews were killed between the 1920s and 1950s. Both through Nazi genecide and the Soviet Union's anti-communist, pro-religious extermination.

To put it bluntly, the Jews got royally @*#%ed. I don't think it should be like that every time around.

Concerning the mod, while it looks like you went through a lot of trouble changing a whole host of equations and formulas, there are a lot of balance issues with this mod. For starters, the AI is not built to handle any of these changes. While human players will eagerly trade off those resources that are useless to them, the computer will hold on to them. Another thing I don't like is that you effectively made 3 religious shrines useless. I'm not going to go into the spread rates or the various stats of each religion, because these in themselves are unbalancing traits by modifying them and thus places the pace of your civ in the luck of the draw on technologies. Better luck with your next try at the mod. Jollyroger3 has some good points.
 
The other issue with this is that Jews are not in any way pacifistic. They fight. From Biblical times onwards, Jews have been surprisingly determined warriors.

How about puting a defence modifer like City walls have on the Jewish temple, say 25% that would make the city a bit harder to concour and fit well with the history of Jews fighting doggedly to defend against countless invading armies both anchient and modern (no value judgments here just saying they do a good job holding onto territory regardless of legitimate ownership of said territory)

Also I see some people are conserned about the randomess of religion, I recently got a little python script working which imediatly removes the Holy City when its founded. You still get some anoying messages but for all practicaly purposes religions are no longer founded by discovering a Technology. The next step will be to move to a Shrine and Propher (um I mean "religions guy") based system. This will give the player complete control over when/ware/what religion is founded.


Overall I realy aplaud the thoughtfull work going into these religion mods, better to have a controversy then the vanilla religions Firxaxis gave us.
 
This is some...interesting...work you've done here.
In concept many of your ideas will make for interesting gameplay mechanics...however I do see the same religious slant that others see here, and I also recognize some almost blatant...hmmm...not racism...is there a word for racism when its against a religion instead of a race? Relgionism? Heh...

At any rate I didn't come here to bash you or your mod, it is clear that you have some preconcieved notions about various religions and it has resulted in a mod with some strong biases. I like some of your choices and find others amusing. I like the lakc of missionaries for Buhddists, although I think the spread rate is a bit exaggerated...The Pnelaty for pork is an exaggeration as Jewish people do not get sick from pork and shellfish, they simply get no benefit from them. I would reccomend changing this from a negaitve to merely NO bonus at all. Or instead of a Helth bonus change it to a monitary bonus to reflect that all that can be done with this resource is to trade it way if you are Jewish.

As a general suggestion, I would reccomend you bring some other people in on this project to give it more of a sense of religious balance. As one who has studied most of the religions out there to some degree, I know that none of them is "The" religion and every single one has its own faults and virtues. As a Muslim you will obviously desire certain things in a religious MOD, however these things may not accurately portray the muslim religion as it exists in a non-contextual historical and evolutionary sense. I would reccomend a panel for a MOD like this: 1 Person from each religion, 1 Atheist, 1 Agnostic. The potential arguments would be stellar, but if you could reach a healthy consensus, the result would be an objective and reasonable mod that may indeed accurately reflect the religions of the world in a non-contextual or biased way.

Remember you must protray the jews without any of their history.
You must protray the Christians and the Muslims the same way.

For the player there never was a Holocaust because its the year 4000BC...there may never be one unless things unfold in a certain way.

For the player there has yet to be a Crusade, and unless things occur in just the right way it may never happen within their game.

When history is in the hands of the player, religions must be designed without a historical context.
 
I have to aggree with Simetrical. Jews have historically been very warlike at times, it just that they were always outnumbered. American Jews are peaceful, but then so are all religious people in America. In Israel, where Jews have enemies nearby, they are quite militaristic*.

In any case, I'm more of a fan of letting different religous civics represent differences between religons. That way there can be different denominations within a particular religion that give different characteristics. Maybe you could change the diplomacy so you only get the bonuses for same religion if you're running the same religious civics, to create denominational tensions within a religion.


* Before someone accuses me of being antisemitic, I mean this in a morally neutral manner. It's a debatable question whether militarism is a virtue or a vice under the circumstances.
 
Nice work. Very thought out. But, in my opinion, the wrong direction to go.

Actually, I think the designers got it right. Religion is a tool that rulers use to persade the populus to adhere to there wishes. The basics are the same. We worship/meditate. We like/help others like us. We dislike/hurt others not like us.

Everything else is details stemming from random influences of the span of time since the inception of Religon.
 
Gargoyle said:
Nice work. Very thought out. But, in my opinion, the wrong direction to go.

Actually, I think the designers got it right. Religion is a tool that rulers use to persade the populus to adhere to there wishes. The basics are the same. We worship/meditate. We like/help others like us. We dislike/hurt others not like us.

Everything else is details stemming from random influences of the span of time since the inception of Religon.


Well put, and concise!
 
Not to trash your thread, but I think Abumouse is closer to what folks are looking for concerning gameplay balance and religions in this CIV game.

Simply put you done out thunk yourself. Less is sometimes better.:king:
 
Mylon How do I keep the nations monthiestic?? I gave alot of advantages to Taoism for example (~+30% research) and Christianity (+6 :)) I don't see your point. You might want to answer my question on your mod in your thread btw

Jolly I'm not killing the religion, I'm merely stopping its spreading, which is historically accurate for both Hinduism & Judaism

And what do you mean why Islam is the final religion?? It's the final religion in the game, and in history. You haven't been playing Civ4 for a long time have you?

The temples are never obselete!! Please read what I've said again. Regarding culture decrease, there's a gameplay reason which I mentioned in my first post. And there's a real reason which is multi-religions states tend to have less of a culture (think usa, Canada, Australia, for example)

Katz I'm not sure about the AI understanding the effects, we need a professional programmer to answer the point here. But the values do change even in the civiplopedia, and the AI knows what it needs to build to get what. Remember that the AI, for example, can very well convert to a religion once it enters all its cities, which reveals it has some "thinking" and knows what is best for it

About the Jews, fine, I'm sure a good number of them quit the religion via converting to newer religions (xianity, Islam). Even almost all Christians in Islamic countries converted (the very living example is Egypt). But still how do you suggest I show their small number?

Finally, Jolly's points only shows he didn't read/understand my post. His question about "why Islam is the last religion" obviously shows he never played the game anyway

Impaler The Qor'an (Islam's holy book) spoke of the Jews that they refused to fight with Moosa (Moses) and told him "Go with your Lord and fight, we're staying here till they exit the city" (they = the enemies whom took their land and their children). So I don't know if we should put that...

And I'm sorry but I didn't quite understand what you said about the Shrines and Pro.. um.. religious guys? Could you explain it again? :)

Fex That's what I did! Pork gives NO bonus in cities with Jewish temples. It's +1 -1 health remember? (read my first post well)

Racism/Religionism is a must when you want a decent and realistic gameplay. I mean how did you like the Vanilla version of religions? *puke* it SUCKS! All religions are the same is totally unrealistic and was very un-entertaning for me. Religion is responsible for, say, no less than 50% of wars in our history, whether directly (we hate you coz you're heathens) or indirectly (we'll take their oil coz they're terrorists)

About your suggestion with many ppl doing a mod: I'm not good @ team work, and we'll never agree anyway. The best thing is have everyone of those do his mod, and then the player uses the one he sees fits more for his view of reality/gameplay. I mean, surely a Jew won't like my mod where I show the Jews can build armies more difficultly, coz they see themselves as brave warriors etc etc

And I partially agree with removing historical contexts. I mean, even in the core of Islam, Moslems should have many children and should fight bravely (which was, and is, implemented historically). In Christianity, you should love all others etc etc (and I totally ignored the actual fact that Christians almost never did that in real life), and so on maybe except for Judaism which I'm kinda biased against I admit :p

Gato That's funny if anyone accuses you of being anti-semitic, Semitic means the sons of Sam, the son of Nooh, which includes BOTH Jews and Arabs! (that's why we -The Jews and the Arabs- are cousins). We are the descendants of Esma'eel ("Eshmael" in the bible I think), and they come from Esahaq (Isaac), both are the sons of Ibruheem (Abraham), may peace be among all of them - the prophets I mean!
 
As it has been said before... some very nice ideas.

But... before I start, don't get me wrong. You did a very nice effort, and I thank you for it. While I will not agree in many points, your work is really appreciated. So, now onto the critics, first of all...

There is a clear bias towards Islam. And there are well... slightly offensive comments in the initial posts, even when, I admit, some of them are against your own religion (the one for suicide bombing in Islam made me cringe, to be honest, the 11/9 reference, too). Still, the vision on the rest of the religions you put in your mod is... well... quite islam-o-centric, if you allow me to say so. So I don't think the stated objective in the tittle of the thread 'Very realistic' is really accomplished. Actually it should be called 'Religions from a self-moderated islamic point of view'. I am quite sure from what I have seen that anybody here who is not muslim might probably feel more or less the same about this mod.

I do agree that real religions are a lot more varied than in the game (with late religions getting just a difference of one initial free missionaire), but still I would try to rather generalize the types, than particularize every one. If anything, I would suggest this division:

- Ancient religions: more localized impact, difficulty to spread, it's just a pain to see that the majority religions at the end of the game are usually hinduism and budism, 9 out of 10 times in my games. About the nature of ancient religions, Judaism is a very clear example. Buddism and hinduism just happened to be founded in a more populated areas. It's a pity they agrouped under 'paganism' religions that had a lot more impact in the world that now appears obvious, such as mitraism and greek polytheism (which was far more complex, specially in the Roman era, than simple Norse or Aztec paganism), and of course zoroastrianism, to put forward an example of this.

- Modern religions: I would say that there would be a clear division between Confuncianism and Taoism, and then Christianity and Islam. While the former where non-proselithist in nature, the later are rabidly so. Seeing something in this direction would be nice. Still, I don't really find an objective difference between Islam and Christianity. The current 'tolerant' stance of chistianity was not so much in the, le't say XI-XVI centuries, and the religion should be the same through all time, I rather think that the religion civics are there to reflect the changes of that nature rather than aiming it the way you do in your mod.

- I like the restrictions on multiple religions in the same city. Frankly, there should be a possibility to try to wipe out non-state religions from your cities, as it happened historically and get a benefit from it. Having non-official religions in your cities should be BAD news in some ways, except maybe under free religion or pacifism religious civics.

- Customization. I like to have little details to give a little colour to the religions (like the pig thing, and adding a little commerce to the islamic shrine, for example), but they should only be that: colour, not rather religion defining.

- Free religion: I agree free religion should receive an overwhaul... it's just too good the way it is now. I would not go as far as giving one unhappy face by religion. Rather it should have no impact on happiness... it should rather help a bit with culture rather than happiness, in fact. Research is not a bad idea, since freedom for religion has reputedly increased freedom for thought and thus scientific thought. I would rather leave then the research bonus, and replace the happiness bonus with a 10% GP bonus for each different religion in the same city or any other similar bonus (and all this counting with a clear restriction of having more than 2 different religions in the same city).

- A particular comment on one of your replies "And there's a real reason which is multi-religions states tend to have less of a culture".

I must say you can't be further from the truth. If you think U.S.A.'s culture is not significative... well, I don't think you have seen much of the world. Movies, books, nearly the bloody whole internet movement, food and drink(unfortunately for the world in this point, I feel obliged to say), fashion, architecture... the list is endless, and there are enough unique elements to distinguish it from generic 'western civilization'. And you can feel it from Japan to Chile, passing through any other country (and this including islamic countries... and if you don't think so just look at the commercial buildings and clothing). And it's not all about the military power, and only because it comes toguether, with financial might. While, well, you can't really feel the cultural influence of, let's say, Saudi Arabia out of any non-islamic country. Gosh, the very proof of USA's cultural influence is that you are playing an american game, with

The thing with culture, in its forms and influence, is that it's a subjective thing. Its definition can't be restricted, so I feel a bit annoyed when I hear people comment on the U.S.A.'s 'lack of culture' (particularly from fellow europeans).

While there are a lot of other hints, I think this comment captures the biased essence of your 'realistic' approach.

Since I guess you must guess I do have a bias myself, let me detail my own origins, being Spanish, from a 99% catholic country (well, not so that much now with all the immigration in the last decade, but it was like that when I was born). But, being actually quite gnostic, myself.
 
this shows the Christian tolerance to other creeds (err... pre 9/11)

Actually, Christians have always been savage towards non-Christians and heretics, persecuting and criminalizing them.
 
Islam is not a FINAL religion in vanilla Civ 4 - it's just the one latest found - and that IS a difference :rolleyes: Writting "final" religion I meant you make Islam in fact the last standing religion with possibility to spread and there's no technology or building which can stop that - that causes serious lack of balance between religions - other's religions cant't spread since some considerable time, while Islam can still spread and nothing stops that.

You ask how long I've played Civ4 - let's say long enough to see a lot just from a tech tree and bonuses from technologies ;) Whatsmore - I've played your mod and this religious imbalance really occurs...

In your mod you favor Islam, cutting the possibility of better spreading of other religions by changing the tech tree - I just think it's not the best way. Much more realistic should be to work on some religious civics. CIVICS, CIVICS and again CIVICS is the way to influent the spread ratio and other religious bonuses, IMO.

Of course you can skip reading my post, ignore my suggestions or whatever, but I just think that would be a loss to all civ players not having a good, well-balanced, religions affecting mod to play, and thus not necessary waste of all the efoort you put to creating the mod ;)

So I'd like to encourage you to develop the mod just showing you some exagerrated features in it which affect negatively the gameplay or are much too far from reality - that's the aim of my words. Of course you may create a mod in which Islam is the only reasonably religion because of severe penalties for every other religion, but then the mod will be playable only for you and some Muslims - I think that's not your point :)
 
Fachy said:
[Spread rates (original is 100):
Judaism & Hinduism: 10 (shouldn't spread after their obsoletion)

What do you mean, these religions shouldn't spread after their "obsoletion"?

I can assure you Hinduism is anything but obsolete, and I doubt you'll find many practicing Jews who agree that their religion is "obsolete" either. What do you fancy obsoleted them?
 
Fachy said:
Fex That's what I did! Pork gives NO bonus in cities with Jewish temples. It's +1 -1 health remember? (read my first post well)

Racism/Religionism is a must when you want a decent and realistic gameplay. I mean how did you like the Vanilla version of religions? *puke* it SUCKS! All religions are the same is totally unrealistic and was very un-entertaning for me. Religion is responsible for, say, no less than 50% of wars in our history, whether directly (we hate you coz you're heathens) or indirectly (we'll take their oil coz they're terrorists)

About your suggestion with many ppl doing a mod: I'm not good @ team work, and we'll never agree anyway. The best thing is have everyone of those do his mod, and then the player uses the one he sees fits more for his view of reality/gameplay. I mean, surely a Jew won't like my mod where I show the Jews can build armies more difficultly, coz they see themselves as brave warriors etc etc

And I partially agree with removing historical contexts. I mean, even in the core of Islam, Moslems should have many children and should fight bravely (which was, and is, implemented historically). In Christianity, you should love all others etc etc (and I totally ignored the actual fact that Christians almost never did that in real life), and so on maybe except for Judaism which I'm kinda biased against I admit :p

At least you admit your Biases and try not to hide them or deny them. As to your assertions about each religion I could not really disagree with you more. The prime purposes of any and all religions regardless of what color they paint them is to 1) Spread itself(Be Fruitful and multiply) to the exclusion of all others, and 2) Control/succor the general population(Religion is the opiate of the masses).

I disagree that Rascism/religionism is a must when implementing religions. Firaxis already did so by imcluding a -4 modifier to relations for anyone of the wrong religions. I think certain things could be done to improve the implementation of this without making different religions inhernetly weaker than others. The biggest complaint is not that you have failed to make all religions the same (as they are in vanilla Civ) but that the religions are no longer balanced. They should all balance out. You know anything about accounting or math. Each religion should have certain attributes, but they should be equal but different attributes granting no real advantage other than a flavor.

In truth no religion is better than any other from a non-historical perspective. They all choose an invisible man(or men) in the sky to Blame for everythign good and bad they cannot explain by other means. They all lay down rules and laws which their members must obey or suffer some form of punishment either in this life or an assumed afterlife. The Root for all religions is the great unknown of what happens to us when we die, and mythology, cautionary tales, rules, and regulations which must be observed to prevent the "eafterlife" from being unpleasant.

The only "religion" to fall even a little outside of this mold is Buhddism as at its core it requires devotion to no particular god. Merely the recognition of a higher power of some sort. The rest of Buhddism is a philophical way of looking at life and dealing with the enevitability of death. In this, buhddism ends up being the same. Its about death.

Other than not being able to eat pork, or no meat on fridays, or no use of caffiene...which are all relatively sound dietary suggestions from a strictly medical viewpoint...no religion has said or done anything of importance towards the advancement of the human race other than serve as a birthplace for common law. Relgion invents nothing. Religion's prime products are a general sense of well-being and a resentment of those who are of another religion. Granting serious penalties, or giving serious advantages to one religion over another is fallacious and silly!

Inherently:
Jews make no better or worse warriors than Muslims.
Christians are not more rascist than any other religion.

Historically:
Jews have been stomped on more than any other religion due to location, and circumstance.
Christians have done more stomping than any other religion.
Muslims have shown they know how to hold a grudge better than just about anyone on the planet.

The problem is that you have given the religions traits based on history.
How about putting Islam at a severe disadvantage during the medieval era and giving christianity huge advantages during that period to help encourage the crusades to take place?
How about giving the Jews huge advantages financially during the industrial era so that during the modern era you can stage the holocaust and then turn several major religions against them?

Oh and I see my logic error on what you did with Pigs/Shellfish, I thought you made them -1 instead of +1...you just gave them -1 in addition to +1 so that they cross cancel. That makes sense!

And back to what I was saying earlier...for every negative give a posotive and no one can really complain. For the Jews you give them too many negatives and barely any positives. You cripple them militarily, you cripple them on three resources, You stunt their growth... This is a lot of negatives...where are their positives? You give them a couple extra cuture points, and bonus health for cows, fish and sheep, and a slight bonus to research from temples...Cripling their military and their growth outweighs these benefits by a lot.
 
I must say you can't be further from the truth. If you think U.S.A.'s culture is not significative... well, I don't think you have seen much of the world. Movies, books, nearly the bloody whole internet movement, food and drink(unfortunately for the world in this point, I feel obliged to say), fashion, architecture... the list is endless, and there are enough unique elements to distinguish it from generic 'western civilization'. And you can feel it from Japan to Chile, passing through any other country (and this including islamic countries... and if you don't think so just look at the commercial buildings and clothing). And it's not all about the military power, and only because it comes toguether, with financial might. While, well, you can't really feel the cultural influence of, let's say, Saudi Arabia out of any non-islamic country. Gosh, the very proof of USA's cultural influence is that you are playing an american game, with

I agree with Fachy here, multi-ethnic multi-religion states are going to have less cultural influence because they absorb culture from outside so easily. American music is basicaly African, foods and language are mostly European ect ect. The Mylon mod dose a nice job of portraying this having culture pass from city to city on Trade routes. A nation with lots of trade will see a lot of forign culture in its cities. Further more if we interprit history as a game of Civ the US is has built Broadway, Rock n' Roll, Hollywood and the Internet and is currently way ahead on the score graph, but this is only one game and you cant say the US is inherently culturaly strong from one game. That along with lots of Commerce being aplied to Culture production puts the US ahead in total culture points but the % of that culture thats American is going to be rather low.

As to my plan to change religion founding and HolyCities. As I said the first step was to prevent holyCities from being created, I have a somewhat messy python script that will do that. Next I remove holy City requirments from all the Shrines and added a Tech requirment that coresponds with the Religion. So for example the Buddest Shrine requires Meditation. Now the player must actualy build the Shrine using a Great Prophet to get a religion introduced to their Civ. I think I will also add some free Great Prophets to some of the Techs so you dont have to wait so long to get thouse Shrines built. I could come up with another script that puts the HolyCity ware the Shrine is built but I was thinking of saving that for a new Wonder that I someone sugjested.
 
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