Religious Wonders?

Hello there! I've been greatly enjoying this mod. My most recent playthrough was a Babylonian game, wherein I attempted to build all the wonders that Babylon was known for in Babylon. Things were going well at first, I had the Divine Prophets mode on (LOVE that option, by the way, no more having 20,000 junk religions in my empire!), so I used a Great Prophet to found Mesopotamianism in Babylon and built the Tower of Babylon there, then picked up the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Then I grew my empire up to size 6 in 6 of my cities to build Glassmiths in them, and was going to build the Ishtar Gate. Only then did I find out that the Ishtar Gate requires Zoroastrianism, which was not mentioned in it's Civilopedia entry.

I understand that Zoroastrianism needed more wonders to make it an attractive religion, but why do they get the Nimrud Palace and the Ishtar Gate? Both of these were built in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II. If these were built by Persian rulers it would make more sense to me, but Nebuchadnezzar II wasn't Persian.

Unfortunately the person(s) who set these up left the forums long ago. This means that the reasons are lost in the mist of time.

I would recommend the following changes then, take my recommendations as you will.

Ishtar Gate: Currently gives +2 Espionage bonus for all State Religion (Zoroastrianism) buildings. Changing to Mesopotamianism will overpower the wonder as that religion has a larger number of religious structures. I recommend changing the bonus to a +4 Espionage bonus on Courthouses, thus giving it the exact same benefit as building a Zoroastrian Fire Temple and a Zoroastrian Fire Shrine.

Remove Nimrud Palace and Ishtar Gate from Zoroastrian State Religion buildings, replace with the following:

Pir-e Naraki: This is the site where Nazbanu, daughter of the governor of Pars fled the advancing Muslim army. Here she prayed to Ahura Mazda, and, according to legend, a portal opened within the face of the mountain and took her in. At the spot a spring began to well up and plants began to grow where previously there were none. A traveler slept at this oasis later, and in his dreams learned of the tale of Nazbanu. Here he built a shrine, now one of the premier pilgrimage sites of Zoroastrianism

Pir-e Naraki Benefits: +2, +6, (Great Prophet) +4
+100% Great General Generation Within Cultural Borders
All Cities Gain +25% Defensive Strength
State Religion Buildings Grant +2
Requires State Religion (Zoroastrianism) To Be Active

Seti Pir: Seti Pir, located at Maryamabad, a northeast suburb of Yazd city, is dedicated to the last Zoroastrian queen of Iran, Shahbanoo Hastbadan, mother of the princess Banu Pars and Hayat Banu, and wife of Yazdegird III, the last Sassanid king. According to legend, this is where the pursuing Arabs caught up with her. With no escape possible, the exhausted queen laid down on a rock at the pir, prayed, and together with her two attendants was taken into the rock. The other legend is that to save their honour, the queen and her two attendants jumped into the deep well at the pir.

Seti Pir Benefits: +6, (Great Prophet) +4
-75% War Weariness
All Cities Gain +15% Defensive Strength
Units Cost -50% Less To Upgrade
All Units Built In This City Gain The Morale Promotion
Requires State Religion (Zoroastrianism) To Be Active

My last building recommendation is not for a Great Wonder, but rather a normal building. The Zoroastrians have a unique way of taking care of the dead. They practice sky burials, allowing the birds to eat the flesh of their dead as a final act of charity. The places where this happens are known as Towers Of Silence. Often they are hills outside of town, although in some cases a city has grown around the Tower, particularly in India. In these cases, the tower is surrounded by a forest garden to keep it seperate from the city.

Zoroastrian Tower Of Silence: +2 , +1 , +1 (Great Prophet)
Can Turn 1 Citizen Into A Priest
Cannot Be Built In The Same City As A Graveyard

Added to my list of things to do which gets larger every day. It is supposed to get smaller.

Whoops! Before you do, I forgot a very important wonder that is currently Zoroastrianism only that definitely needs to be Mesopotamian! "Hammurabi's Stele Of Laws". I don't know how I forgot that one.

Zoroastrianism will need another wonder to replace Hammurabi's Stele Of Laws to maintain the balance, then. Give me a few minutes and I will come up with something.

Edit: How about this?

Behistun Inscription: The Behistun Inscription (also Bistun or Bisutun, Modern Persian: &#1576;&#1740;&#1587;&#1578;&#1608;&#1606; < Old Persian: Bagastana, meaning "the place of god") is a multi-lingual inscription located on Mount Behistun in the Kermanshah Province of Iran, near the city of Kermanshah in western Iran.

Authored by Darius the Great sometime between his coronation as king of the Persian Empire in the summer of 522 BC and his death in autumn of 486 BC, the inscription begins with a brief autobiography of Darius, including his ancestry and lineage. Later in the inscription, Darius provides a lengthy sequence of events following the deaths of Cyrus the Great and Cambyses II in which he fought nineteen battles in a period of one year (ending in December of 521 BC) to put down multiple rebellions throughout the Persian Empire. The inscription states in detail that the rebellions, which had resulted from the deaths of Cyrus the Great and his son Cambyses II, were orchestrated by several impostors and their co-conspirators in various cities throughout the empire, each of whom falsely proclaimed kinghood during the upheaval following Cyrus's death.
Darius the Great proclaimed himself victorious in all battles during the period of upheaval, attributing his success to the "grace of Ahura Mazda".

The inscription includes three versions of the same text, written in three different cuneiform script languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian (a later form of Akkadian). In effect, then, the inscription is to cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone is to Egyptian hieroglyphs: the document most crucial in the decipherment of a previously lost script.

The empire which takes it's lessons in rulership from the tolerant, financially wise, and organised Darius I The Great will certainly prosper.

Behistun Inscription Benefits: +2 , +4 , +4 (Great Artist)
Decreases National Rebelliousness
-50% Civic Upkeep
+1 Trade Routes In All Cities
+1 In All Cities
Requires State Religion (Zoroastrianism) To Be Active

hotrodlincoln said:

Whoops! Before you do, I forgot a very important wonder that is currently Zoroastrianism only that definitely needs to be Mesopotamian! "Hammurabi's Stele Of Laws". I don't know how I forgot that one.

Zoroastrianism will need another wonder to replace Hammurabi's Stele Of Laws to maintain the balance, then. Give me a few minutes and I will come up with something.

Click to expand...

There are a bunch of wonders by Platyping which I am converting, maybe one of those. I can never remember who Cyrus was with and there are two there one is about laws.

I just realized I forgot to add technology requirements for these.

Zoroastrian Tower Of Silence: Priesthood
Pir-e Naraki: Sanitation, Siege Warfare, Aesthetics
Seti Pir: Siege Warfare, Feudalism, Aesthetics
Behistun Inscription: Code Of Laws, Aesthetics

Dancing Hoskuld said:

Added to my list of things to do which gets larger every day. It is supposed to get smaller.

Click to expand...

Tell me about it.

I noticed you mentioned graphics being a problem with this sort of thing in the religion thread. I can get some graphics made for these suggested wonders, what format and size do the pictures need to be?

hotrodlincoln said:

I noticed you mentioned graphics being a problem with this sort of thing in the religion thread. I can get some graphics made for these suggested wonders, what format and size do the pictures need to be?

Click to expand...

They need to by 64x64, and in .dds format, otherwise they'll cause problems.

How to make a Button/Icon for C2C.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8921884&postcount=22

Cheers! I'll get to work on this.

Sorry for the double post, but these should be done and ready to go. Should I use a particular file-naming convention for these? Who should I send these to? Also, what about the picture for the screen where a movie would otherwise be?

Post them here in a zip file. I usually name them the same as the wonder they belong to with white space replaced by underscores or just left out.

I usually make a static movie which is just a picture but if you do then it saves me time. If you provide one in jpg format I can convert it to bink no problems. If you are up to it you could do the XML for the new buildings that would be really great but not a problem if you aren't.

I am completely useless in Python, I am afraid. I could try and learn a few tricks, but at this stage I am more likely to just cause problems that you would later have to fix than anything else. If you're willing to do the XML work, though, then i'm more than willing to make the graphics and do the research for religious wonders that are currently lacking in fun buildings, like Jainism.

What size do the movie JPGs need to be, or does the game automatically compress them? I will include those in the button file as well.

Edit: I just realized that came off rather lazy sounding. I will try and learn the XML work to the best of my abilities to take the wonder making workload off of you, but first..I must learn!

Most of what you want can be done in XML. As far as I have seen movies are squashed or expanded to fit the screen.

Here's the buttons and the "movie" JPGs for Pir-e Naraki, Seti Pir, The Behistun Inscription, and the Tower Of Silence (Which has no "movie" as it's a normal building, albeit one associated with the Zoroastrian religion). Let me know if there are any problems with those and i'll fix them right away.

Edit: Doh! Forgot to give an in game description/civilopedia entry to be used for the Tower Of Silence

Tower Of Silence: The Tower Of Silence, or Dakhma is a raised, circular structure, used to expose the dead to the elements, and away from the lay worshippers.

Zoroastrian tradition considers a dead body&#8212;in addition to cut hair and nail-parings&#8212;to be unclean. Specifically, the corpse demon was believed to rush into the body and contaminate everything it came into contact with, hence the Vendidad (an ecclesiastical code "given against the demons") has rules for disposing of the dead as "safely" as possible.
To preclude the pollution of earth or fire, the bodies of the dead are placed atop a tower&#8212;a tower of silence&#8212;and so exposed to the sun and to birds of prey. In their final act of charity, the follower of Ahura Mazda gives their flesh to the scavengers of the sky.

I have just started work on these and I notice you have not specified a technology requirement for the buildings. Is this because the tech required is before Zoroastrianism is founded or an oversight?

The tower of silence is very interesting but the graveyard is the start of a building chain so I will need to think on how it fits. The buildings off the graveyard are not suitable for Zoroastrianism mortuary practices.

Zoroastrian Tower Of Silence: Priesthood
Pir-e Naraki: Sanitation, Siege Warfare, Aesthetics
Seti Pir: Siege Warfare, Feudalism, Aesthetics
Behistun Inscription: Code Of Laws, Aesthetics

I posted this a few posts above, after I realized I forgot to specify tech requirements for these wonders. Seti Pir and Behistun Inscription would be a wee bit on the unbalanced side if all you needed to create them would be Dualism.

What are the other buildings on the graveyard tree? I must admit I rarely build this building unless a given city is suffering health or happiness issues.

Maybe this is a bit much, but I would love to see all religious wonders, including shrines, only working if their state religion is active. For instance, Kotoku-in would only work if buddhism was active.

I say this because if a player gets a significant tech lead and is able to found and spread multiple religions, then their wonder power is much higher than another player left in the dust. For instance, if I found Hellenism and Judaism, I can build all the wonders for those. Adding in Angkor Wat, my priests now do 5 2 2. That's ridiculously powerful, turning my empire into a scientific commercial industrial powerhouse that no civ could ever match.

By restricting religious wonder stacking, it would encourage the player to stick with one or two religions tops.