Sevo
Leaf on the Wind
Faces of God
A Civ4 Religion mod by Sevo
Version: 1.02
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Brief Version Info
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1.02-Fixed Hall of Idols error, python error
1.01-Fixed a couple of debugging code popups I forgot about
1.01-Changed martyr behavior
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Introduction
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Civ 4's inclusion of religion has added a great deal, but the game designers chose to make all of the religions exactly the same in terms of game benefits to avoid offending players and/or playing into sterotypes regarding various religions. But we all know that religions are, in point of fact, very different, and many of us were seeking ways to give flavor to our civilization's religions. This mod is an attempt to bridge the gap between offending people and making gameplay more fun by allowing religions to create an identity for themselves. Now you can have religious crusades, holy monuments that spread influence, religious courts, and even terrorism. Any religion can have any of these attributes--it's up to you to define how your religion will be practiced!
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About the Mod
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This mod introduces 7 new religious wonders, 9 new units, 7 new religious buildings, and a new way to enhance or change game religions to give them personality. My personal goal, as with all my mods, was to maintain the basic rules and gameplay of the core game, but add more choice and more customization for the player.
It works as follows:
1) Religions are founded the same way they always were--by being the first to reach a specific technology. I may change this in the future, but for now it stays.
2) Once you spread a religion--ANY religion--to more than 60% of your cities and establish that religion as your official State Religion, you will be granted a Holy Founder for that religion. The Founder arrives in response to the prayers of your people as they seek guidance as to how they should behave in accordance with their religion. Note that it is NOT necessary to found the religion or control the Holy City. You can pick up Taoism from your civ next door, spread it around and change your state religion to Taoism, and a Taoist founder will appear. Later in the game if you pick up Christianity you can spread it, change your state religion, and a Christian founder will appear. This significantly decreases the importance of being the first to get a religion. Anyone with religion can get the benefits of a Holy Wonder. Furthermore, there's no longer a need to get a specific religion for specific benefits as with some of the other religious mods. Any religion will do, you just have to define it.
3) The Holy Founder can go to any city in your empire and oversee the contstruction of one of the seven Holy Wonders. Each of these Holy Wonders, described in detail below, grants benefits and drawbacks to the religion throughout your empire.
4) If you change to another state religion your people will destroy the holy wonder during the revlotion and all of its effects will vanish. If your new religion is adequately spread, however, you might receive a new founder the next time your new religion reaches a new city.
The idea here is that your people will practice their religion according to their specific beliefs. If the state changes its religion, and the people embrace the new religion, they will change the way they behave as well.
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New Buildings
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The Holy Wonders
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***** Cathedral of Vengence *****
This building is essentially a stronghold for religious zeal. The city in which it is built becomes a bane to all non-believers. Called martyrs by their people, terroists by their enemies, they can move undetected through the lands of their enemies and create havoc. The city will never grow weary of war with their holy enemies, for God has decreed they must be wiped off the face of the earth. The cost is high, however, as disorder created in the city is high and the toll on the economy and infrastructure of the city, and indeed the rest of the empire, is high. The zealots are not supported by the State, at least, not officially...
-Requires Priesthood
-Local Benefits: -100% war war weariness, 100% defense, 2 free priests +1 priest spot
-Local Costs: -50% science, cash, culture
-Empire Costs: -20% Great person rate, 200% anarchy length, -1 pop/city, -1 trade route
-Empire Costs: +1 unhapy, +1 uck
-Units Allowed: Sleeper cell, Martyr, Bandits
***** Sacred Archive *****
The priests of this religion take a scientific and educational view of the world. It is their holy mission to learn about the world given to them by God and to share what they learn with others. All of their holy buildings will add to their mission. Their dedication to science, however, comes with a cost, as they tend to produce more unhealthiness in the cities in which they reside. Also, there is a small decrease in military production since resources are shifted towards scientific endeavors.
-Requires a Library
-Local Benefits: +50% science, +2 free scientists
-Local Costs: +1 uck
-Empire Benefits: All state religion buildings +3 science
-Empire Costs: +1 uck/city, -10% military production
***** Garden Of Divinity *****
This religion is based on closeness to nature, living in harmony with the world, and the cultivation of the earth. They believe that the Earth is (the) God(s) charge unto us and we must care for her and ourselves. We should be fruitful and multiply. This religion will encourage expansion and big cities. The rapid growth decreases military training, however, since there is faster turnover. As a result, units are less experienced.
-Requires 1: Corn, Sugar, Wheat, Rice, Banana
-Empire Benefits: +2 happy, +2 healthy all cities. Priests produce 1 bread.
-Empire Costs: -4 experience points all units
***** Religious Judiciary *****
The men and women of this religion have become the judical class of the society. Income is increased as taxation and religious donation become one and the same, and all religious buildings increase income. Furthermore, the people may embrace any legal civic they choose. The downside is that personal expression is discouraged, decrease cultural growth.
-Requires Courthouse
-Local Benefits: +100% gold, 2 merchants allowed
-Empire Benefits: State religion buildings +3 gold, allows all Legal Civics
-Empire Costs: -25% culture all cities. State Religious buildings provide no culture.
***** Holy Crusade *****
The people of this religion are focused on the conversion and/or destruction of non-believers, but unlike the Cathedral of Venegence, the cause is supported by the State. The religion becomes a military, training the holy for rightous war with its enemies. The units produced are adept and penetrating enemy lands and attacking cities in the desire to bring them salvation. The empire is more patient with war, but less focused on forward progress in technology.
-Requires at least 4 cities
-Local Benefits: 1 priest allowed, +50% military production
-Local Costs: +100% maintenance
-Empire Benefits: Crusader barracks in all cities (to produce units), +2xp/unit
-Empire Benefits: -50% war weariness, 20% defense all cities
-Empire Costs: -25% great people birth rate, -20% science
-Can build Crusader Units
***** Hall of Idols *****
This is a religion focused on the construction of idols and great works dedicated to the God or Gods. They excel at creating Wonders, and the more resources they have to work with, the greater their works will be. The city that the Hall of Idols is built in becomes dedicated to great works, forgoing military production and diverting most of its resources to production of idols
-Requires a Forge
-Local Benefits: +25% hammers with each: gold, silver, marble, stone, gems, ivory
-Local Costs: -75% gold & science in this city, -50% military and spaceship production
-Empire Benefits: +1 hammer all priests
***** Religious Monument *****
Unlike the Idolators, the supplicants of this religion are focused not only on the construction of great works, but on all aspects of religious culture. Throughout the empire culture is boosted, and great people are more common as personal gifts are encouraged and nutured. War, however, is looked upon as a crude vulgarity and is poorly tolerated by the people.
-Local Benefits: +50% culture
-Empire Benefits: +50% great people, +1 free specialist, +1 gold/priest, +10% culture
-Empire Benefits: +3 culture per State Religion Building
-Empire Costs: +100% War Weariness, -25% city defense
-Can Train Holy Artisan
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Normal Buildings
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***** Religious Village *****
Like temples or monastaries, one of these can be built for each religion in a city (e.g., Jewish village, Hindu village, etc.) This represents a small community of the religious followers living together and sharing their common bond. This increases happiness in the city in many ways.
-Requires: Guilds
-Cost 180
-Benefits: +1 happiness, +1 happiness if state religion, -20% war weariness, +3 culture
-Will gain any benefits granted to state religion buildings by holy wonders
***** Crusader Barracks *****
These are gained by a civ with a Holy Crusade, and they allow the construction of the crusader units. They cannot be built.
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New Units
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Holy Founder -- (one for each religion). These units will appear when the State Religion is spread to more than 60% of an empire. They can build the seven Holy Wonders above, assuming they have they other requirements.
Guardian -- [Crusader Unit] This unit is a more powerful archer than the basic unit. It has a combat value of 4 (instead of 3) and two first strikes. There is no military support required for crusader units.
Champion -- [Crusader Unit] This unit has a combat value of 8, an improvement over swordsmen thanks to superior equipment. As part of their dedication and training for carrying salvation to the stronghold of the enemy, they have a base city attack of +20%.
Crusader -- [Crusader Unit] This is a superior "knight" unit. Like the knight, the base combat value is 10. However, the Crusader has a base 20% withdrawl rate and a +15% city attack rate.
Mobile Artillery -- [Crusader Unit] Made possible by the zeal of the crusaders moving it, mobile artillery can move 2 squares per turn instead of the base 1. This allows it to keep pace with tanks and other armored units penetrating enemy territory.
Fist of God -- [Crusader Unit] This is a modern armor unit equipped for Crusade work. It is more powerful than its normal counterpart, has a +10% city attack, and can bombard city defenses on its own, although somewhat slowly. A division of these units is an awe-inspiring power on the battlefield.
Sleeper Cell -- [Vengence Unit] This is an early unit that acts like a spy. The sleeper cell can move invisibily through enemy territory and explore. If it settles in a city, it can monitor production and attempt to sabotage it for a cost.
Bandits -- [Venegence Unit] The bandit is a unique unit to the Cathedral of Venegance. When a bandit leader is created he can build a depot on any available square in the empire. The depot will decrease food production. Once the depot is built, a bandit will replace the bandit leader. The bandit can move into neutral or enemy territory and sit on any improved resource he finds to steal a portion of the production. Back home, his depot plot will gain the resource as he ships it back. (In game terms, the bandit's depot plot gains the resource the bandit is on and grants the civ "access" to that resource). If the bandit is lost his depot becomes useless. If the depot is destroyed the bandit must rebuild it. A civ is limited to 3 bandits.
Martyr -- [Vengence Unit] A martyr is a unit willing to trade his life if it means harming his religious enemies. His belief that he will be rewarded by his God(s) for his sacrifice drives his will. The martyr can move undetected into enemy territory. Once inside of a city, he needs several turns to establish contacts and plan an operation. When the act is commited, it will spread anger and unhappiness through the target city, frightening citizens, many of whom will refuse to work for several turns (+1-3 unhappiness in city for 8 turns). There is a small (20%) chance that the city will actually panic and revolt for a few turns. There is an even smaller chance (around 5%) that the damage done will kill a significant portion of the population (-1 pop in city), in addition to sending it into a panic. I have seen the AI use these units, and they tend to target your larger cities! You've been forewarned!
Holy Artisan -- [Monument Unit] A holy artisan is a scaled down great artist. He can be created in the city with the Holy Monument and can go to other cities and create works of art to increase culture.
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The AI
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My testing has seen the AI build all seven of these wonders and utilize them effectively. You're going to have benefits, but so will they. Don't be surprised to see crusader units out and about. Unfortunately, they don't handle some of the terrorist units correctly--namely the bandits (they do fine with the sleeper cell and martyrs). I'm still working on a way to improve the AI handling of these units.
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For Other Modders
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I've tried to make this easier to incorporate into other mods than it might otherwise have been. All of the python functions are included in a seperate FacesOfGod.py file that can be simply copied into another mod. Then you just have to copy the proper lines into the EventManager.py file for the interrupts.
Please note that I'm using the .setScriptData() and .getScriptData() functions (for CyUnit classes and CyPlayer classes) to hold information between saves and loads, and I'm using an array in the FacesOfGod class itself to hold some info, too. You don't have to understand what that means, necessarily, but you DO need to know that if you are debugging your own changes this will create some strange behavior. Let me explain:
If you do an in-game reload of your python modules--for example, you alt-tab to the desktop, modify a python file, then alt-tab back to the game, and the pop-up "Reloading Python Modules" comes up, then any saved data in the FacesOfGod class was just lost during the reload. Suicide bombers will be "off the clock" and fail to detonate, and the script initialization may be lost so you may see more error messages from my code than you should. Don't be bothered by it if you haven't done anything to change my code. When you reload or start a new game the errors should stop and everything will work again.
As for the XML most of my changes I've included as _SevoModAdded.xml or something, so you can immediately find what you're looking for. If a seperate file isn't included, any changes are at the bottom of the target file. (FYI, I made several changes to names and naming conventions, so some of the unit names are backwards, namely the martyr and the bandit. I apologize if this creates problems!)
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Notes
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This represents the first release of this mod and bugs are expected. I've done a great deal of playtesting and within the limits of my one-man effort everything seems to work. This does not mean everything actually works! This mod is big and there are a lot of Python functions. Please let me know if you find any bugs or abnormal behavior that you think needs fixing. I'll patch bugs as quickly as I can, so check back in for updates and patches.
Also, it's difficult to play out seven full games and test all the possible uses of these units and wonders. Feedback regarding gameplay is greatly appreciated and comments are welcome!
I don't have any translations for any of the text. If someone out there is motivated and translates the text entries into their own tounge, send me a copy and I will gladly incorporate it into the mod. Note that for the sake of speed I have coded some of the english text directly into the python functions. I'd like to change this in a future release as well if there is sufficient demand.
I'm not 100% happy with the way Martyrs currently work. I'd like them to be able to do damage when not at war "officially", but I've foreseen problems with various implimentations I might have taken. I'll be working on this, but ideas are welcome. Along the same line, bandits don't currently hurt the civ they are "stealing" from, but there also isn't any way for a civ to remove a stealing bandit. That's something else I'll be thinking about.
Other future designs include more custom religious units for the various flavors, and perhaps another flavor or two if any good ones pop up.
You may freely incorporate any or all of this mod as you'd like into other mods of your own making, I only ask for credit for the original work. I've tried to make it easy for other modders by including files with ONLY the added info where appropriate. If not copied to a separate file, they are always at the bottom of a given file with a blank line to demarcate the new info. It should make cutting and pasting into new mods easier. Also, all of the python functions are in their own file, you just have to add the appropriate function calls to the event manager. (FYI, I made several changes to names and naming conventions, so some of the unit names are backwards, namely the martyr and the bandit. I apologize if this creates problems!)
I hope you all enjoy this mod! It was a lot of fun to create!
-Sevo (sevotastic@yahoo.com)
DOWNLOAD LINK:
Faces of God ver 1.02 (FileFront)
Faces of God ver 1.02 (RapidShare)
