[Mod] Alt Religions

Update: BtS compatible version here. For more information, see this post.
Update 2: The files were lost a while ago but I've re-uploaded them at the link above.

This mod replaces all of the religions in the game with made up, but hopefully realistic seeming, religions. For an explanation of why I would do this, you can take a look at the companion mod to this, Alt City Names. All of the missionaries, buildings, and appropriate buttons and icons have been replaced. I took the liberty of making two small adjustments to gameplay as well; Cathedrals and shrines give additional benefits to differentiate the religions, and two of the late religions have been moved to earlier techs. One reason for the movement is that I've found the very late religions usually play almost no role in the game. Another is that I wanted to spread the religions around a little so it wasn't always the same few leaders founding all of them.

1. Oroborianism
   Founded by: Meditation
   Cathedral extras: +25% Science
   Shrine Extras: +100% Science
2. Sutism
   Founded by: Polytheism
   Cathedral extras: +100% Culture (replaces the standard +50%), +2 Happiness (in addition to the +2 you get if Sutism is your state religion)
   Shrine Extras: +100% Culture, +1 Happiness in all your cities
3. Ezbolism
   Founded by: Monotheism
   Cathedral extras: +20% Science, +1 Health
   Shrine Extras: +100% Science
4. Vaalkazism
   Founded by: Horseback Riding
   Cathedral extras: +25% Military Production, New land units receive +2 XP
   Shrine Extras: +100% Military Production, New land units receive +2 XP
5. Word of the Lawgiver
   Founded by: Code of Laws
   Cathedral extras: -25% Upkeep
   Shrine Extras: +100% Science
6. Krondism
   Founded by: Construction
   Cathedral extras: +15% Production, +5% Prod. with marble, +5% Prod. with stone
   Shrine Extras: +50% Production
7. Church of the Golden Flame
   Founded by: Theology
   Cathedral extras: +50% Gold
   Shrine Extras: +100% Gold, +1 Commerce from Priest specialists in all cities

The civilopedia entries describe the religions and their shrines but they're all pretty brief. This is intentional, so you can assume whatever history is appropriate for your game. There are a few last remarks you should read before you install this:

1. Update: This is no longer a problem, at least in BtS. Install this in the Mods folder of your Civ 4 game directory, not the one in My Documents. This is because of a bug which prevents the small building and unit icons from showing up correctly in the city bar when you're building them if the artwork is in the My Documents folder. Unfortunately, this also applies if you put them in CustomAssets. Putting the appropriate buttons in your Civ 4 game directory and the rest of the mod in CustomAssets should probably work though.
2. Update: Fixed in BtS version. Because the Sutist and Vaalkazian missionaries use the same models I haven't been able to get the effect that you see when you spread their religion in a city working correctly for both of them simultaneously. So for now the Sutist symbol shows up but no effect shows up with the Vaalkazian missionary. I may need the SDK to fix this.
3. Update: Changed in BtS version. There is no longer a conflict so the default version doesn't change the city names. If you want to use Alt City Names, you can get it here. This mod and my Alt City Names change one of the same files so since I intended to use them together this mod contains my Alt City Names city list. If you would prefer to use the default city names I've attached the file you need at the end of this post. Just replace the Civ4CivilizationInfos.xml file in Alt Religions\assets\xml\civilizations with that one.
4. All of the text is in English only, but there's not much of it.
5. I didn't make new movies for the founding of religions. They all use Christianity's movie. I also didn't add wonder movies for the shrines. They just use blank screens.

The Main File: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/AltReligions.zip
The alternate Civ4CivilizationInfos.xml is attached below.

Here is the advisor screen showing the symbols for all of the religions.

This shows all of the buildings added along with a screenshot showing the small icons above the city bar.

These are the missionaries (now with labels).
After posting this I realize that English missionaries wasn't the best choice here. Since they're white it's hard to see where the team colors go. I've added a screenshot with Greek missionaries now.

Very nice idea . *thumbsup*

Kewl

I've renamed my OWN religions this way, with great looking graphics for their own :

Confucianism - Longevity
Taoism - Duality
Judaism - Singularity (was going to be named Monotheism first)
Islam - Submission
Buddhism - Idolatry
Hinduism - Pantheon (was going to be named Polytheism first)
Christianity - Devotion

This is really great. I am only sorry that it has to be installed as a standalone mod, because this means I have to choose between it and FexFX--Bigger. (With your Alt City Names, it was set so that the game would load with your varied city names and then I could just load his bigger world as a mod, and I was off to the races.)

What paint program did you use to add the icons to the Gamefont file. No matter what I do, the darn thing always messies up.Yes, the cyan dots are matched.

beorn, fortunately FexFX's mod and this one only have one file that overlaps, so it shouldn't be hard to combine them. Below, I've attached a version of the file in question that combines FexFX's changes with my new missionaries.

One way to combine the mods is to simply copy all of the files from Alt Religions into FexFX's mod's folder, then replace the file
\FexFX--Bigger-and-longer\assets\xml\units\Civ4UnitInfos.xml with the new one attached to this post.

Alternatively, you could put FexFX's mod in CustomAssets and Alt Religions in its own mod folder. Then replace
\Alt Religions\assets\xml\units\Civ4UnitInfos.xml with the new file. You could do it the other way around too, but then you'd run into the bug discussed at the end of my first post.

RED DIAMOND, I used DXTBmp. I first opened Gamefont.tga in DXTBmp, then I saved the base image and the alpha chanel as .bmp files. I edited those seperately with GIMP and then stuck them back together with DXTBmp to get the new Gamefont.tga.

Alulim said:

beorn, fortunately FexFX's mod and this one only have one file that overlaps, so it shouldn't be hard to combine them. Below, I've attached a version of the file in question that combines FexFX's changes with my new missionaries.

One way to combine the mods is to simply copy all of the files from Alt Religions into FexFX's mod's folder, then replace the file
\FexFX--Bigger-and-longer\assets\xml\units\Civ4UnitInfos.xml with the new one attached to this post.

Click to expand...

Thanks!!! Looks great.

Alulim said:

RED DIAMOND, I used DXTBmp. I first opened Gamefont.tga in DXTBmp, then I saved the base image and the alpha chanel as .bmp files. I edited those seperately with GIMP and then stuck them back together with DXTBmp to get the new Gamefont.tga.

Click to expand...

Thx. One other question. How did you place the images in between the lines and what did you use to make the cyan dots? The reason I ask is because cut and paste seems to change the color around the border and thus makes my Gamefont files fubar

@RED DIAMOND: I'm planning on making a tutorial on how to mod the GameFonts.tga file, along with any other file that contains an alpha channel. Just wait till it's done

Other than that, yes, there are certain problems with that file. Problems that I had difficulty understanding as to why they actually cause a problem.

My guess is that even a messy alpha channel (that is, a non-pitchblack pixel on the borders of the alpha channels) can cause a problem, let alone the pink borders and the cyan dots! I have yet to test this theory, though. I think the game parses the borders of the image from both the alpha channel and the RGB channels, as the alpha channel is embedded in the file.

spincrus said:

@RED DIAMOND: I'm planning on making a tutorial on how to mod the GameFonts.tga file, along with any other file that contains an alpha channel. Just wait till it's done

Other than that, yes, there are certain problems with that file. Problems that I had difficulty understanding as to why they actually cause a problem.

My guess is that even a messy alpha channel (that is, a non-pitchblack pixel on the borders of the alpha channels) can cause a problem, let alone the pink borders and the cyan dots! I have yet to test this theory, though. I think the game parses the borders of the image from both the alpha channel and the RGB channels, as the alpha channel is embedded in the file.

Click to expand...

Good enough for me. Waiting patiently. As you see in my pic I have 9 religions. The only part messing up right now is the Gamefonts file

What about Zoroastrianism? Perhaps the first Civ to research Mysticism discovers Zoroastrianism

Great mod, Alulim. I like the feel of the game with the generic religion names, and I like how the religions are differentiated by the cathedrals. Very nice change to the game that takes the whole game a full step forward in complexity.

I'm going to cook your mod into my own personal mod. I've already used your technique for city names to generate a list of 30 city names per Civ. I started with your random names and added names of real (very small) towns on modern maps of the respective civs. I also regenerated the German names (my favorite Civ) using very small towns in Germany.

Anyway, I want to see if I can eventually merge AltReligion with Kidinnu's True Prophets mod, so as to make religions less a game of tech-chasing and more about personalities appearing at the right place and right time in history.

Cheers!

EDIT: It seems I've successfully merged Kidinnu's True Prophet mod into this Alt Religion mod. So now, instead of a tech granting a religion, I need a Great Prophet to pick one in whatever city I want. Or so it seems. I'll be testing this over the next few days. Since I've now merged 21 mods together, I don't know if I could recount how I did it! It took some guesswork and a bit of investigative file browsing

I've been playing my composite mod in which I've merged TrueProphets, Alt Religion, the Inquisitor, and Religious Victory. It works beautifully

I really like the feel of the game now that I've removed RW religions, and I like the fact that religions are founded by people, not by technology.

Thanks to Kidinnu, Alulim, Mylon/Robo Magic Man and donquixote235 for creating the initial mods - together, they've made religion a much more satisfying and complex aspect of the game, IMHO.

Spocko said:

I've been playing my composite mod in which I've merged TrueProphets, Alt Religion, the Inquisitor, and Religious Victory. It works beautifully

I really like the feel of the game now that I've removed RW religions, and I like the fact that religions are founded by people, not by technology.

Thanks to Kidinnu, Alulim, Mylon/Robo Magic Man and donquixote235 for creating the initial mods - together, they've made religion a much more satisfying and complex aspect of the game, IMHO.

Click to expand...

Is this available for download?

Thanks - no, it's not yet ready for downloading - I have about 23 other mods mixed into my composite mod and it would take alot of work to untangle it.

I tried uploading the entire mod (SpockoMod), but it failed because it is 4,025kb -- well over my 500kb upload limit.

Once the new patch comes out, and after I've cooked my mod into it, I'll also build a mod with just these four religion mods. Plus I'll document everything clearly enough so that it will be easier to cook into future patches.

FWIW, here's my list of the mods that form my composite mod:

SpockoMod specifics:

1. No more sheep and pigs on hills during map build.
.../Assets/XML/Terrain/CIV4BonusInfos.xml
"<bHills>0<bHills>" for both pig and sheep.
{1.52 patch compliant; credit to Master Lexx's GreenMod noted}.

2. Gunships can pass over mountains.
.../Assets/XML/Units/CIV4UnitInfos.xml
"<bCanMoveImpassable>1</bCanMoveImpassable>" instead of "0"
{1.52 patch compliant; credit to Spocko noted}.

3. Reskins of several units.
.../Assets/Art/Units/{unit name}.
{1.52 patch compliant (replaced dds files); credits noted below and in Units folder text file}.

4. Got rid of Victory Proclamation text that stays at the bottom of the screen.
.../Assets/XML/Text/CIV4GameTextInfos.xml
<!-- Deleted text to match the following: -->
<!-- TXT_KEY_MISC_WINS_VICTORY, whose following lines [English][/English] have victory proclamation removed -->
{1.52 patch compliant; credit to CivFanatic Smidley noted}.

5. Centered (1/3 down from top) "Turn Over" Text.
.../Assets/Python/Screens/CvMainInterface.Py
{1.52 patch compliant; credit to Apolytonites AOH and RO (for preparing a text file that made it work).}

6. Reanimate aircraft in Intercept mode.
.../Assets/Python/CvEventManager.Py and its subdirectory .../MyTools
{1.52 patch compliant per developer, credit goes to CivFanatic 12Monkeys}

7. Various new flags [too numerous to list].
.../Assets/XML/Art/CIV4ArtDefines_Civilization.xml and .../Assets/Art/Interface/TeamColor/*.dds
{1.52 patch compliant since the XML file was not touched since Oct 2005.
Credits: CF Bad Ronald; CF Rhye; CF Krispa40 including the German Maltese Cross; WWII Mod for the Red German flag}

8. ClockMod
.../Assets/Python/Screens/CvMainInterface.Py - edited the PY file for centering turn over text; search for "ClockMod"
{1.52 patch compliant per CF Tubby Rower}
Credit: CF Tubby Rower

9. Light Roads
.../Assets/Art/Terrain/Routes/Roads/roadprimitive.dds
{1.52 patch compliant (simply installed dds files)}
Credit: CF patgarr

10. Plot Lines (showing unit strength level, assignment)
.../Assets/Python/Screens/CvMainInterface.Py - edited the PY file for centering turn over text, for "ClockMod" + various other folders
{1.52 patch compliant per CF 12Monkeys}
Credit: CF 12Monkeys

11. Show Leader Attitudes
.../Assets/Python/Screens/CvMainInterface.Py - edited the PY file for Centering turn over text, for "ClockMod", for Plot Lines
{1.52 patch by my editing a 1.52 compliant PY file}
Credit: CF Snaitf

12. Various ideas from CF player1 fanatic's MiniMod: SDI=2000 hammers, 85% change; BB's prereq also Combustion; SAM Inf has 75% bonus v. Gunships
.../Assets/XML/GameInfo/Civ4ProjectInfo.xml and .../Assets/XML/Units/Civ4UnitInfos.xml which includes Gunships over mountains mod by Spocko
{1.52 patch by my editing a 1.52 compliant PY file}
Credit: CF player1 fanatic

13. UN Modification v1.0 by CF TheFourGuardians
{1.52 patch by my editing a patched 1.52 compliant XML file}
Credit: CF TheFourGuardians

14. Promotions and Perks
Credit: CF Zuul

15. Simple Reminder
Credit: CF eotinb

16. Enhanced Domestic Advisor
Credit: CF 12Monkeys

17. FreeTechMod
Credit: Apolytonite tywiggins

18. Enhanced Wonders Screen that shows wonders only for Civs you've met
{modified the original CvInfoScreen; claimed to be 1.52 compliant}
Credit: CF CyberChrist

19. Balanced Civics Mod
{Jan 2006 filedate implies it is 1.52 compliant}
Credit: CF Armandeus

20. Generic City Names
{used 1.52 CIV4CivilizationInfos to edit names providing 30 names per Civ}
Credit (concept and some names): CF Alulim

21. Alt Religion
{Alulim's files that seem to be dated after 1.52}
Credit: CF Alulim

22. True Prophet
{Many changes to Alilum's Religion files, Kidinnu's file dated after 1.52}
Credit: CF Kidinnu

23. Religious Victory
Credit: CF donquixote235

24. Raw Commerce City Display
Credit: CF Sevo

25. Tech SplashWindow
Credit: CF Roamty

26. Inquisitor (does not work in foreign civs per my own tweak)
Credit: CF Robo Magic Man (general design and programming)

27. Camera Angle improvement
{used 1.52 file to make adjustments noted herein: Assets\XML\Misc\CIV4DetailManager.xml}
Credit: CF DireAussie

28. Identified Great People by GS, GE, GP, GM, or GA
Credit: myself

============== TO DO:
Seemingly Doable:

a. Add more Great People
b. Give the Inquisitor a choice of what religion to purge
c. Master Lexx's replanting of trees
d. Add tobacco and coffee resources (a few of my vices)
e. Add civ name to message when a GP is born somewhere (my city names are all fictitious [Alulim's Alt City Names mod], so I don't know for sure what civ a city is associated with)
f. Have the "turn over" text be the same size as the "X Turns Left" and displayed in bold orange

Watch for someone else to do it:
a. Cultural decay (preferably one that does not let culture disappear just because a civ is destroyed)
b. Helicopters over water (at least the coast) - (may be too strong though... perhaps diminish its defense strength/vulnerability)
c. Building airbases
d. Combat promotions through training at a barracks or fort (for these, you can pick the promotion)
e. Combat promotion due to hard work in battle - battle determines the promotion, not the player' choice
f. Ability to defy UN resolutions or to leave the UN
g. other Great Peoples (General, Doctor, Farmer, Politician)
h. Civil war, secession
i. Leader's attitudes change over the generations
j. Automated recon missions
l. Promote spies (revolution/corruption; demolitions, strategic war spy (disabling nukes, intell, or planting nukes; counter spy)
m. CivFanatic Willowmound's 1.52 compatible ActualQuoteDiplomacy Mod
n. Apolytonite Silver14's idea of Worker Promotions

Spocko