Religion redesign

Still work in progress. If you like the general idea, please make suggestions and I will continue to try to expand this and edit good ideas into this original post.
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I dislike how religions are currently implemented in this mod. They feel too generic, too unfluffy in some cases (Judaism? 2 flavors of Christianity?) and lack Dune flavor. Besides, while "religion" is a major factor for some factions, it just doesn't make sense as a major motivating factor for other factions; the Harkonnen just aren't that religious.

I propose a major redesign which uses the religion mechanic as more of an Ethos or Value system, rather than just actual religious faith.

IMO the key purposes of the religion mechanic in civ4 are:
a) to encourage factionalism and "holy wars"; you are friendly with your co-religionists and hostile to others
b) to reward founders to get the holy city and those who take the effort to get a great prophet and build a shrine
c) ideally to differentiate religions and add to replay value by making different religions play differently.
d) to add to the feeling of world immersion.

To do this I would completely eliminate the current system;
i) remove all the existing religions, temples, monastaries and cathedrals.
ii) Change the priest city specialist (currently a Truthsayer) to an Adherent, or Believer, and make the Great Prophet a Prophet.
iii) Change the artist city specialist (currently a ghola) to a Noble, and the Great Artist to a Great Noble. Gholas should be some kind of Tleilaxu mechanic.
iv) Rename zensunni teachings tech "mysticism". Remove the way of the believers, religious influence. Merge or eliminate many of the early religious wonders (there are too many) or distribute them over later techs.
v) Add in 5-7 new religions.

Note that the lack of early religion will also (deliberately) make happiness and happiness luxuries more valuable during the early game.
Note that the presence of your state religion in a city will always give +1 happy +1 culture (many of the temple replacements here do not give happy or culture)
Note that the religions can only be founded by or adopted by particular factions. That is, the religion gets founded by (and the holy city placed) by the first faction *from the allowed list* who researches the foundation tech.


1. Landsraad. Alternative names: Galactic Empire, The Great Compact.
Idea: The ethos of preserving the feudal galactic status quo. This is an early game religion that is founded by an early tech and is easy to spread, but can be easily overtaken later by any of the other ideas for change.
Can be founded by or adopted by: the emperor, or any of the main landsraad houses (Atreides, Harkonnen, Ordos, Fenring, Ix, etc.) or Bene Gesserit.
Founded by tech: Imperium
Great shrine: Lansraad council. Adds +2 free noble specialist, +1culture per city with this religion, +1 gold to all noble specialists. Spreads religion. Can be built by great priest, great noble.
Unique buildings: Feudal estate. Gives +1 happy, +2 culture. Allows 1 citizen to be converted to noble.
Fiefdom. Gives +50% culture, +1 happy, +1 happy if Landsraad is state religion, requires 3 feudal estates. Allows 2 citizens to be converted to noble.
Unique units: Diplomat. Standard missionary unit. Requires feudal estate.
Special properties: High spread rate, high spread rate from shrine. This religion is automatically removed from a city whenever any new religion is planted in that city.

2. CHOAM
Idea: ethos of trade, particularly spice. Spice makes CHOAM go around.
Can be founded by or adopted by: the Guild, the emperor, or any of the main landsraad houses (Atreides, Harkonnen, Ordos, Fenring, Ix etc.).
Founded by tech: offworld trade.
Great shrine: CHOAM Headquarters. not actually a shrine, but instead another spice corporation hq (and no executives to spread it), that competes with all the other spice corporations (so you can't have both in the same city). Spreads CHOAM religion (not the same as the corporation). Founded by a great trader or a great priest. Gives +2 trader GPPs.
So this allows you to get a second city that gives +3 commerce per spice resource you control.
Unique units: CHOAM emissary. Standard missionary unit (spreads the religion, not the corporation). Requires CHOAM outpost.
Unique buildings: CHOAM outpost. Gives +1 trade route, +25% trade route yield. Allows 1 citizen to be converted to trader.
CHOAM Directorate (cathedral replacement). Requires 3 CHOAM outposts. Gives +1 trade route, +50% trade route yield, gives +1 happy from each of the various luxury rade goods (semuta, opafire, etc.)
Allows 2 citizens to be converted to trader.
Special properties: This religion requires creating both a religion (the main component) and a new corporation (which shows up ONLY as the replacement for a holy shrine). Low natural spread rate, low spread rate by shrine, normal price missionaries.

3. Messianism. (Alternative: Way of Muad'Dib)
Idea: Jihadist. Convert the galaxy by the sword.
Founded by: Holy Jihad tech.
Can be founded by or adopted by: Either Fremen faction, Atreides, Bene Gesserit. (The BGs don't really practice it, but if they're the founder then they are manipulating it for their own ends, as Jessica does during Dune).
Great shrine: Dune Messiah (?better name?). Gives -100% war weariness in this city. Gives -25% war weariness empirewide. Gives +10% military production per city with this religion. So the shrine becomes a unit factory powerhouse. Gives +1 priest GPPs.
Unique units: Jihadi. Requires theocracy. Strength 6 melee unit, very cheap on hammers, death does not cause war weariness. Designed to be cannon fodder; lower strength than contemporary units, but able to be fielded in overwhelming numbers.
Unique buildings: Temple of Muad'Dib. +1 happy, +1 culture, +15% military production, +1 unhappy per non-state religion. Allows 1 citizen to be converted to priest.
Special properties: no missionary unit. Low natural spread rate. High spread rate from shrine. Whenever a civ that has this as its state religion conquers a city, this religion is automatically added to that city.

4. Tleilaxu Supremacy
Idea: Tleilaxu should be apart and separate, with their own theistic faith that they will never share with outsiders. Essentially, this is a religion that can only ever be adopted by 1 civ. Its main purpose is to encourage the 'Otherness' of the Tleilaxu, and the fact that everyone hates and fears them (diplomacy penalty for different religion with every other player).
Can be founded or adopted by: Tleilaxu only. This is the only religion the BTl can adopt.
Founded by tech: mysticism (so you get it in your capital).
Great shrine: Prophecies of Bandalong. +4 culture, +2 free priest, +1 hammer output to priests and great priests in all cities.
Unique units:
Unique buildings: Probly easier to make any relevant buildings just be BTl faction UBs - just make sure that some of them allow citizens to be converted to priests.
Special properties: no missionaries. No automatic spread or spread from shrine The religion is automatically spread to any new city founded by the BTl faction. (Several religions in Warhammer mod work like this, so I know its codeable).
(Issue: can enemy inquisitors remove religions in enemy cities? If so is this a problem, you could kill this religion off. Is there a way to make a particular religion immune to inquisitors? Maybe just add really expensive missionaries?)

5. The Golden Path
Idea: The extreme stability intrinsic in Leto II's great plan. Narrow minded. A late-game religion, it should stunt research and trade but provide a ton of happiness.
Can be adopted by/founded by: anyone except BTl, Guild.
Founded by tech: Some new late-game tech.
Great shrine: ??
Unique units:
Unique buildings: The Golden Path. -25% beakers, -50% trade, +5 happy +5 healthy +10% water. (unsure about this - maybe even more happy, maybe it makes the city immune to unhappiness, or maybe this should be a Cathedral effect).
Special properties: When spread to a city, it instantly eliminates all other religions in that city. Does not have a natural spread rate, is not spread by shrine; missionary only.


6. Way of Shai-Hulad.
Idea: the kind of general animist worm-worship held by the Fremen before Paul, and many of the regular inhabitants of Dune. Basically a weak backup religion for anyone who doesn't have another one, or for players who would rather get a standard gold-shrine religion.
Can be founded/adopted by: anyone except BTl, Guild.
Founded by: sand worms.
Holy shrine: Shrine of the worm. +2 culture. +1 gold per city with this religion present. +2 priest GPPs.
Unique units: Prophet (missionary replacement).
Unique buildings: Arrakian Temple, +1 culture, +1 water. Natives of Arrakis with traditional lifestyle use less water and so have some excess. Allows 1 citizen to be converted to priest.
Special properties: missionaries more expensive 50% more?, low religion spread rate. This is an inferior religion. Shai-Hulad doesn't answer prayers.

7. ?
Technocracy
Idea: a techno-industrial complex leading back towards thinking machines. Technology bonuses and production bonuses, but happiness penalties (the people don't trust the machines)
Can be founded/adopted by: Guild, and Landsraad house except Atreides.
Founded by: Some mid-game technological tech.
Holy shrine: The Great Processor. +2 culture, no GPPs (its not encouraging human development), +25% beakers, +1 beaker per city with this religion. Can be founded by great prophet, great scientist.
Unique units: Technocrat (expensive missionary).
Unique buildings: Automated factory. +25% hammer production, +1 unhappy. Allows 1 citizens to be converted to engineer.
Computerized research center. +25% beaker production, +1 unhappy.
Special properties: Low spread rate, no spread rate from shrine. Expensive missionaries.

The other possibility of course is to merge the Pro-Spice religion into CHOAM, and have Way of Liet as another religion, instead of a separate civic category, with catchbasins and reservoirs as unique buildings for that religion.

Maybe Kwizatz Haderach as another religion? Something that favors the BGs? Maybe foundable by BGs, Atreides and Harks (the key genetic pre-requisites)?

Or maybe a technological/industrial ethos, favoring Ix?
This could be a path leading back towards thinking machines.

Can normal buildings devour resources in the same way that corporations can? It would be cool if some of the CHOAM buildings could give say +1% gold per extra spice resource.

The religion of the Orange Catholic bible could also be another alternative as a general generic religion, in addition to or in place of the Way of Shai-Hulad.

Bump. Are these ideas something worth trying to expand on more? Any feedback in religion inclusion?

yeah i liked yourideas here,
im all for more religions, and more religion effects -
we can make each one different as you suggested, with units, and buildings.

but, it early now, since we dont have a 1.4 ready yet.
once we do we will be free to implement some new ideas.

I agree with the concept. I do not think we can redesign religions without also including civics; both should be designed together. Do you want to take a crack at a paper design?

A lot of good ideas here.

Perhaps we should have:
- an early religion that represents the initial Fremen mysticism called Zensunni, incorporating the Mahdi prophecy, worship of Shai Hulud, etc
- an early religion called Kwizatz Haderach representing the Bene Gesserit objectives, playing with blood lines, etc
- a later one, called Religion of Muad'Dib to represent Dune Messiah onwards, the fanatical missionaries, liturgy and jihad. It would be good to represent the Qizarate as having a special role within this, perhaps dual-role missionaries and inquisitors for removing other religions.

Could we do something interesting like found religions in certain circumstances? For example, if the religions Kwizatz Haderach and Zensunni coincide in one city then Religion of Muad'Dib is founded in that city. Perhaps civs can produce heirs/Kwizatz Haderach candidates, but only one can become the KH/Mahdi, founding the religion in the process. (I still haven't given up on the KH being a unit using respawning and multiple lives)

Maybe there should be a religion/civic that represents passionate loyalty to the Imperial throne for Corrino?

Perhaps use the name Tleilaxu Supremacy for the TL one? Too many Way of-s...

The Way of Shai-Hulad was designed to represent the Fremen mysticism but also the general population (they refer to the natives as being of the desert (Fremen) or of the pan and graben (city/town dwellers). I don't like calling it Zensunni, because that sounds like a generic faith that you could have on any planet, and has nothing to do with Worm-worship.
I'm definitely open to changing the name though.

I guess there is no real reason for it necessarily to be an inferior religion, we could buff it a little.

I don't think Kwizatz-Haderach makes sense as a religion that civs will adopt - its a secret plan known only to the BGs. I think it makes more sense to think of the BGs as being able to found or adopt nearly any of the other religions and work them towards their own purposes.
I like the idea of incorporating the Quizarate somehow, but I also really like the mechanic of forcing spread by conquest.

I can definitely see a civic representing imperial loyalty, but not really a religion; I think thats encapsulated in the status quo religion (not sure where it should be called Galactic Empire or Landsraad - how about The Great Compact?).

BTl Superemacy sounds fine.

There are several things in the design which I do not know how to implement.

a. Religions which can only be founded by certain civs. Religions are normally founded by the first civ to research a tech. If you look carefully, there is a different icon in the tech tree depending on whether you researching it will give you the religion; for example, the pyramid icon can have a little Jewish star in the corner, or not. So this needs to be controlled on a per-civ basis in addition to first come, first serve.

b. Automatically removing one religion, when another religion spreads into the city.

c. A religious building which acts like a corporation.

d. A unit whose death does not cause war weariness.

e. Automatically spreading a religion when a city is conquered.

f. One religion which is immune to inquisitors.

What we have now is "renamed" versions of the vanilla civs, which is not good; but I am reluctant to undertake this particular design because it has so many difficult looking parts.

a. Religions which can only be founded by certain civs.

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I know this is possible, we have it in Warhammer, but it may require a fudge. In Warhammer, religions are founded either by:
a) Event; when you research the tech for a particular religion, if you are intended to research that religion, an event triggers which gives you a free missionary of that religion, which you are free to activate wherever. So for example, when the Empire or Brettonnia research the Words of Salvation tech, they get a free salvation religion missionary unit (no matter whether or not someone else has researched it before; like how you automatically get a free missionary when you research a religious tech in FFH). However, if High Elves research the Words of Salvation tech, they don't get a missionary.

b) at the beginning of the game; some civs in Warhammer gain their religion automatically whenever they found a new city. So Ancestor Gods is usually founded on turn 1 when dwarves build their first city.
c) by building the shrine wonder; in Warhammer the shrines are normal buildable wonders. Though I think you could also probably allow them to be built by great people in the same way that great scientists build an academy or great prophets normally build shrines, but they can do it in any city, they aren't restricted by the holy city that is chosen (semi-)randomly when the religion is founded.

However, I'm not sure if this ever actually creates a holy city, which we don't need in Warhammer since the shrines are buildable.

I bet others have encountered this before though, maybe post on the general modding forums?

b. Automatically removing one religion, when another religion spreads into the city.

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I haven't seen this before, it just seemed like it would be possible, using an event if nothing else. There is some kind of message that occurs when a religion moves to a new city; it displays a text message to the player. Maybe somehow that could also tie into an event?

c. A religious building which acts like a corporation.

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Again I haven't seen this, but I *thought* it was possible to get buildings to consume resources in much the same way that corps can.
I really like this design so it would be cool if we could figure out a way to do this.
Its a great way to make spice economy more important, which is a very flavorful feature for the mod.

d. A unit whose death does not cause war weariness.

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I've definitely seen this in FFH and various mods of it, but I suppose its possible this was an extra tag they created. Maybe ask them if its easy to add or not?

e. Automatically spreading a religion when a city is conquered.

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Triggerable by an python that happens on conquest? Again I know it can happen in FFH (the Order works like this).

f. One religion which is immune to inquisitors.

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Not really an important issue, just ignore this.
It is only a potential problem with a player-induced expoit which requires a lot of hassle; you have to make the enemy convert, and then inquisition away their old religion, and that can kill the religion off forever.

Ahriman said:

In Warhammer, religions are founded either by:
a) Event; when you research the tech for a particular religion, if you are intended to research that religion, an event triggers which gives you a free missionary of that religion, which you are free to activate wherever.

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That, I can do; but I don't think it gives you a holy city. If I understand your description, some civs get a free missionary and some don't, and you can pop the missionary to spread the religion to a city. Does it matter if there is an official holy city for these religions or not?

That, I can do; but I don't think it gives you a holy city. If I understand your description, some civs get a free missionary and some don't, and you can pop the missionary to spread the religion to a city. Does it matter if there is an official holy city for these religions or not?

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Correct, it doesn't give a holy city.
Yes, in Warhammer the religions are all quite different, and function in different ways, and most civs can only adopt 1 particular religion (or at most 2). So only The Empire, Kislev, Brettonnia, Tilea and Estalia get a missionary from the Words of Salvation tech, and Salvation is the only religion that any of them can adopt (even if it spreads into their cities by other means).

In Warhammer it doesn't matter that we don't get a holy city.

For our purposes in Dune, the problems with not getting a holy city are:
a) The religious victory option requires that you have a holy city for the religion; you can only win a religious victory for a religion whose holy city you control.
Its debatable how big a problem this is.

b) Shrines can usually only be created in the holy city.
However, we can still have the shrines be created by great people in the normal manner without the holy city requirement (the shrines aren't really shrines anymore, they are just world wonders buildable with an ability on great people that have an effect similar to shrines), but this will let players build them anywhere. This could be problematic if you can stack them in your capital city - or more importantly if you can stack them in the city with your spice corps.

I don't think religious victory is anything dune wars needs, because dune is about spice - or terraforming - but not about believe in the first place - maybe for the benegesserit, but to make one victory condition only for one civ seems like exagerating. unless of course, if there was a change from civic to religion for spice/terraform, so that the religious victory would be bound to the believe what the future of dune should be like. even though I don't think this would be a good idea. to have the civics (which can be favorited by the leaders) is already a really nice implemention of the whole terraforming idea. that said, I think the ideas for new religions in the first post are really worth trying and even if they need playtest and refining, they would be a huge improvement to the acutal generic religious system. christianity on arrakis just doesn't feel right.

davidlallen said:

b. Automatically removing one religion, when another religion spreads into the city.

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e. Automatically spreading a religion when a city is conquered.

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There's onReligionSpread and onCityAcquiredAndKept in the CvEventManager, so both is really not a problem.

davidlallen said:

That, I can do; but I don't think it gives you a holy city. If I understand your description, some civs get a free missionary and some don't, and you can pop the missionary to spread the religion to a city. Does it matter if there is an official holy city for these religions or not?

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Also shouldn't be a problem.
I'm sure, that there's a command, which gives you all the cities, which have a religion, and if the number ==1 after onReligionSpread, you can manually put the holy city there.



And yes, i know, i'm saying things, you probably already know.

Thanks for the pointers. I have spent a few hours exploring what can be done. I am not sure of the exact reason, but somehow this religion design doesn't "grab" me. I don't play religions very much in vanilla; mostly in a large game I pick one neighbor's religion so that he won't attack me for a while.

In this design, it seems like a mixture of different motivations. Landsraad is a political orientation which overlaps with the Landsraad tech/building. CHOAM is economic and it overlaps with the spice corps. Technocracy is technical and overlaps with the Ix buildings and UR. Tleilaxu is solitary to make them isolated.

The other three make good religions I can get behind. Shai-Hulud represents the primitive Fremen superstitions. Messianism is what happens in the Dune novel itself, and Golden Path is what almost happens or starts to happen in the next couple of books.

I went hunting a little through the novels to find other things to add. There is a 10-page appendix on "Religions of Dune" in the Dune novel. It is mostly a back story about a bunch of Earth religions who got together to try to agree on a religion, came up with one, and nobody liked it. So that didn't help.

In the background of the novel, I recall learning about Zensunni and the Wanderings. This may be closely tied to what we've called Shai-Hulud, but maybe there is enough to separate them. That gives four. I'll have to look up Qizarate; that must be from the later books, which I never did read. If we had six, it would probably be enough.

One other game design point has to do with the amount of unique mechanics for each religion. In vanilla, there is intentionally *zero* difference between the religions, for real-world reasons which probably make sense. I have made some unique abilities for the civs. FFH is unusual in that it has both unique civ abilities and unique religions. It is not a full N x M number of playable combinations, but there are a number of interesting combinations; I seem to recall most FFH civs can choose 2-3 religions and get a difference in play. That gets exponentially harder.

So, how much unique mechanics do we want/need for each religion?

EDIT: one other point has to do with graphics. Today the mod just uses the original seven missionaries and probably most of the 21 (= 7 x monastery, temple, cathedral) buildings. Some of the 21 buildings are recognizable with an Islamic crescent, Jewish star, etc, so they would stick out if we do something more. Any recommendations for graphics, either a symbol, or existing unit art we could steal, is appreciated.

The purpose of this religious design is to try to model some of the competing interests. One of the things I like most about the Dune setting is the competing set of interests; depending on how you look at it, the Emperor (with his Sardaukar and personal power), the Guild (with space travel monopoly) or the Landsraad (with the wealth of CHOAM) can all be seen as the most powerful group in the galaxy. All of them are reliant on the others. The Emperor can destroy any individual house, but couldn't possibly face all of them aligned against him. The guilds can freeze transport to anyone, stranding and choking them, but have no direct power, and require the spice trade to go on so they can extract their fill. The Landsraad control most of the wealth and have most of the military power, but are weak and divided and can be played off against each other.
[With the Bene Gesserit pulling strings in the background.]

However, during the time of Dune, these old power structures are undermined, and a new order emerges backed by brutal jihad, which in turn leads (hopefully) to the Golden Path of stability, though if Paul had screwed up then the Golden path would easily have not been obtained.
Conceivably, a return to thinking machines was also possible - most likely by Ix, but conceivably other houses could also adopt them too.

This big picture is what I was trying to model; the Establishment influence groups of the galactic political or economic order (loyalty could lie with either group), giving way over time to potential alternative futures for Dune.

Yes, there are different motivations for some of the religions, but that was kindof the point.
I like using these kind of ideology/power structure/loyalty differences as religions far more that I would actually creating a bunch of different religions.
If nothing else, most of the population in the Dune universe isn't particularly religious in the formal sense.

I really like having religions that are quite different, in both a thematic and gameplay sense. As you allude to, the reason why all religions are the same in vanilla is because the game creators didn't want to get boycotted or lynched by people complaining at them that they made Islam too weak, or that they are anti-semitic because they had Judaism give a gold bonus, or that they a racist because they made christianity more productive, or whatever. I think we're unlikely to be attacked by pissed off Fremen

I don't particularly care about art, I'd be happy to just have an icon for each religion and then paste that on top of temple structures.
I'll think about it though.

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Note, another way to fudge the CHOAM shrine.
Make it actually just a World Wonder that requires the CHOAM religion.
The base wonder does nothing but give +4 gold, but when constructed, it establishes the CHOAM corporation in that city, which is just another copy of the standard House spice corporations (and competes with these).
So CHOAM is both a religion (which can be spread between cities as normal) AND a corporation that is only ever present in the shrine city.

You really should do it. You have good ideas, and it would be much better than the generic religions. I think the religions in FFH are "state of the art" so to say... they are divergent and all have something "special" - I'm quite sure, that you are able to do the same for Dune Wars, thanks to your profound knowing of the background story (e.g. Dune).

Any recommendations for graphics, either a symbol, or existing unit art we could steal, is appreciated.

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Between vanilla, Gods of Old, FFH2 and Planetfall you can probably get some reasonable placeholders.

Any recommendations for *what the art should look like*, due to references in the books about what the religious symbols are, would be appreciated.

The CHOAM symbol is pretty obvious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHOAM

The Golden Path could be a gold colored line going off into the distance on a black field.

The Landsraad/Imperium one could be a 5 pointed star set inside a pyramid, like on Shaddam's medal thingie in this picture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shaddam_corrino_iv.jpg

The Shai-Hulad could be a stylized worm set on a yellow circle.

The Bene Tl could be a DNA spiral.

Messianism could be a sword, facing upwards, maybe with a fiery/"holy" aura around it, or with a hand clasping the hilt.

Technocracy could be a pair of crossed hammers (like the community hammer and sickle).

Although I am still not convinced that Landsraad and CHOAM make good "religions", I can't suggest anything better. At least they "sound Dunish".

One of the challenges of changing religions is that you need six different versions of each icon and putting them into all the right places is painful. Here is a set of icons I put together for the seven religions. Before we make the other versions and stuff them where they go, let's agree the graphics are OK. One of the icon sizes, which is displayed in the main window, is a 16x16 to show which religions are present in a city. So it is important to avoid showing much detail, and to choose very different colors.

The icons are in the same order as post #1: Landsraad, CHOAM, Messianism, Tleilaxu Supremacy, Golden Path, Shai-Hulud, Technocracy.