[BtS] Disappearing Religions

Religions don't stick around forever. Cultures shift, beliefs change, Roman emperors convert to Christianity...

Now you can experience this aspect of history in Civ4. With this mod component, whenever there are 5 or more religions present within the borders of a single civilization, one of them will be removed from the map entirely. Feel free to tweek the numbers as necessary. Obviously this component is best suited to a mod which contains a large number of religions, although no changes to the religions themselves are present in this download.

Enjoy.

This is a great and simple component that could work with somebodies mod with a lot of religions.

Great and thanks.

I don't like it as is. IMPoV, it will be better if it is just a random chance ( adjustable in xml ) starting when the five mark is reached. Also, for the sake of realism, it needs to kill the religion only if it is not the state religion in the civ where the mark is reached and in proportion to the global spread of the religion ie the weaker the religion is the sooner it will disappear.

I think it would be better to destroy religions with Inquisitor-unit, and it could work worldwide, although Holy City can be destroyed only on your own lands.

I actually like the idea of this ModComp, but I would like the number to be 3, not 5. I assume I only have to change the number in the Trigger XML file, correct?

Well I think it can use some improvement. This is still an alternative in either case if left like it is.

It seems to me that arbitrarily removing a religion is a bad idea. It would be extremely irritating if you're spreading your state religion, yours is the most powerful religion in the world, and then suddenly BAM! It's gone, all the civs that had your state religion no longer do (including yourself), and your gameplan has coming crashing down in flames. And historically speaking, while religions have indeed died out, none of them have just vanished at their apex. They peter out, people lose interest and convert to something else. If anything, they ought to be removed due to lack of interest.

I would argue the 5 religion setting makes it highly unlikely it would ever come into play (at the very least until the very end of the game)...

I looked at the XML, and it appears it is set so it will NOT choose your state religion...I may be wrong on that, but the iStateReligion is set to 0, which I would assume means it would not be chosen.

I am intrigued with the idea of setting this to 3, on the grounds that very few if any countries today have 3 significant religious populations in their country. Plus it would make for a different game.

snipperrabbit!! said:

I don't like it as is. IMPoV, it will be better if it is just a random chance ( adjustable in xml ) starting when the five mark is reached.

Click to expand...

That's easily done. In the event trigger file is the line "<iWeight>-1</iWeight>". Change that number to a positive number (the bigger, the more likely) and it will work the way to describe.

snipperrabbit!! said:

Also, for the sake of realism, it needs to kill the religion only if it is not the state religion in the civ where the mark is reached and in proportion to the global spread of the religion ie the weaker the religion is the sooner it will disappear.

Click to expand...

On the todo list.

Fin Imperial said:

I think it would be better to destroy religions with Inquisitor-unit, and it could work worldwide, although Holy City can be destroyed only on your own lands.

Click to expand...

There are already Inquisitor mods if you want one of those. This mod does something different.

Edward The Big said:

I actually like the idea of this ModComp, but I would like the number to be 3, not 5. I assume I only have to change the number in the Trigger XML file, correct?

Click to expand...

That is correct. Change "<iNumReligions>5</iNumReligions>" to "<iNumReligions>3</iNumReligions>"

Dom Pedro II said:

It seems to me that arbitrarily removing a religion is a bad idea. It would be extremely irritating if you're spreading your state religion, yours is the most powerful religion in the world, and then suddenly BAM! It's gone, all the civs that had your state religion no longer do (including yourself), and your gameplan has coming crashing down in flames. And historically speaking, while religions have indeed died out, none of them have just vanished at their apex. They peter out, people lose interest and convert to something else. If anything, they ought to be removed due to lack of interest.

Click to expand...

From the gameplay perspective, well that's just something to work around, now isn't it ?

From the flavour perspective, I'll be honest. This is a small part of a much larger mod I'm currently working on (that I may or may not ever get around to releasing) in which it does make sense. I chose to release this component because nothing else of its sort exists and there is a need for something like it. There are many mods that add new religions but few that truly destroy them (the closest is Inquisitors, which due to strategy or resources are rarely used to completely destroy a religion). If nothing else, this allows other people to modify the trigger or add to it, to make a more reasonable event. I just opted for the simplest solution because there was a need for this tool.

Edward The Big said:

I would argue the 5 religion setting makes it highly unlikely it would ever come into play (at the very least until the very end of the game)...

Click to expand...

Possibly true, but as I said this is intended for a mod with lots of religions, so it therefore may occur earlier.

Actually, I'm currently working on a trigger that counts the number of religions in the entire world, which is probably better for gameplay if nothing else.

Edward The Big said:

I looked at the XML, and it appears it is set so it will NOT choose your state religion...I may be wrong on that, but the iStateReligion is set to 0, which I would assume means it would not be chosen.

Click to expand...

As far as I know, this is not the case. I believe it has chosen my state religion before. The state religion variable will force it to choose the state religion if true, but not the other way around. It seems odd that there is no way to pick a non-state religion, though. I'll look into this.

To clarify, I am not opposed to the idea of religions becoming extinct in the game. But I think simply picking a religion at random and getting rid of it is not only unrealistic, it will be bad from the gameplay perspective.

Dom Pedro II said:

To clarify, I am not opposed to the idea of religions becoming extinct in the game. But I think simply picking a religion at random and getting rid of it is not only unrealistic, it will be bad from the gameplay perspective.

Click to expand...

Well fair enough, but the trigger isn't really the point. I'll try to post some variants, including some in which it's not random, but the important thing is having an event that removes a religion entirely. However it's triggered, I think it's a tool that is needed.

I agree this is a great tool, and it can be modded to suit the specfic needs of a given larger mod. I'll dl it and play around with it for week or so to see what ideas i can come up with.

Yeah, I'm with DPII on this one. I think the chance of disappearance should be based on the strength of the religion-i.e. is it the State Religion, how many religious buildings have been built, how many cities both at home & abroad have the religion-that kind of thing. Added with the Inquisition mod, this could add a whole new strategic layer to the game!
That said, Dryhad, kudos for a job well done!

Aussie_Lurker.

Aussie_Lurker said:

Yeah, I'm with DPII on this one. I think the chance of disappearance should be based on the strength of the religion-i.e. is it the State Religion, how many religious buildings have been built, how many cities both at home & abroad have the religion-that kind of thing. Added with the Inquisition mod, this could add a whole new strategic layer to the game!
That said, Dryhad, kudos for a job well done!

Aussie_Lurker.

Click to expand...

If you know how to do that please do so, because I have no idea.

I have got some alternate triggers worked out, though. The first one (B, with A being the one in the OP) does not trigger automatically. Instead it's a regular event with a high probability that is triggered when there are more than 6 religions total in the entire world. This number can be changed in the python file under canTriggerObsoleteReligion. Change "if (iCount > 6):" to whatever. Remember it will trigger when there are more that the chosen number of religions in the world.

The second one (C) is based on technology. By duplicating and altering the trigger, religions can be given an expiration technology akin to buildings that become obsolete. The example in the download is Buddhism becoming obsolete with Priesthood, for no other reason than because that's very easy to test . From a gameplay perspective, this means you can plan around your religion's imminent demise and possibly delay it. It can also be used offensively; if you acquire a rival's religion you can research the obsolescing tech and eliminate it (although if the religion is no present in your empire you cannot obsolete it). From a flavour perspective this can be used to represent new knowledge out dating the superstitions of the past.

Dryhad said:

If you know how to do that please do so, because I have no idea.

Click to expand...

This would be fairly doable. Not only that, but it could be useful for a number of other religion-related areas of the game. Just as you have a player score, you could have a religion score. Then you could set a maximum score with which a civ can be knocked out, or you can set it to knock out the lowest-scoring religion.

I'm going to make a note of this for the future... I'm working on a big religion mod with a lot of changes and expansions of the role of religion in the game. I'd like to see religion score modify their spread rates too, so a scoring system could be applied to more than just religion removal.

This is a really great concept, and I would love to see the system Dom Pedro II and Aussie_Lurker proposed come to fruition.

Cheers,
ripple01

Instead of a religion dieing out, it could go quiet.

A quiet religion:
You cannot build religious buildings or missionaries.

It has a decent chance of dieing out in any city where there are no religious buildings. The chance goes up significantly if there are many other religions. It goes down if it is the state religion.

It spreads far slower (25% speed).

When a religion spreads to a city, it has a chance of converting the members of that religion. All buildings are automatically converted to the new religion.

...

Then again, that requires the saving of data. But it would represent the waxing of a religion quite well!

As an extra bonus, a prophet could be burned to "wake up" a quiet religion. Maybe religions with central shrines are immune to going to sleep?

Yakk said:

Instead of a religion dieing out, it could go quiet.

A quiet religion:
You cannot build religious buildings or missionaries.

It has a decent chance of dieing out in any city where there are no religious buildings. The chance goes up significantly if there are many other religions. It goes down if it is the state religion.

It spreads far slower (25% speed).

When a religion spreads to a city, it has a chance of converting the members of that religion. All buildings are automatically converted to the new religion.

...

Then again, that requires the saving of data. But it would represent the waxing of a religion quite well!

As an extra bonus, a prophet could be burned to "wake up" a quiet religion. Maybe religions with central shrines are immune to going to sleep?

Click to expand...

Wonderful idea, good luck figuring out how to code that.

Hard part is figuring out how to store data cleanly in the civ BTS format.

We can override canbuild with arbitrary code. We can probably override how religous spread works. Heck, those might be overrideable in python, but definately in the SDK.

Aha! Events can have a duration, and are stored. So we can use the event (religion X is gone quiet) that possibly refreshes itself. Hopefully the Python can know which events are going on (and if not, the SDK can almost certainly).

This may deviate too much from the global nature of the original mod (and moreover may not be feasible), but what about having this occur like an event--"We must purge apostasy from our empire". All non-state religions currently in your empire are then listed and you must choose which one to eliminate. I would envision this as deleting this religion and all associated buildings from the player's/vassals cities, while leaving it intact elsewhere, although with a huge penalty on the spread rate (either locally or globally). Possibly it could also result in a diplomatic penalty with civs having that religion as their state religion.