Religion

I started this topic in the original thread, but I'll branch it off so it doesn't become lost:

drjest2000 said:

Now for the really hateful part... Religion.

At the start of the M:C scenario, historically there were actually five major versions of Christianity in wide practice:

Arianism - no Pope, no Trinity, Jesus is just a man - this would be version of Christianity adopted by the Vandals, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths

Celtic - no Pope, no bishops, Abbots are the top dog in a limited area, but has a Trinity, Jesus is more than a man, but not God Incarnate - this would be the version in Britain, France, and the Lowlands until Charlemagne saw the purchasing power of becoming the "Roman Emperor".

Catholic - has a Pope who is top dog and has a Trinity and Jesus is God Incarnate

Donatism - Strongly anti-Pope, strongly anti-bishop, but has a Trinity, Jesus is more than a man, but not God Incarnate - this is the version of Christianity practiced by the Berbers until the Muslim conquest, even then, it held out so that there are Donatists still extant in North Africa today.

Orthodoxy - no Pope, but has a Trinity and Jesus is God Incarnate, the Byzantine Emperor controls the Church, the Bulghars and the Slavs adopt this version of Christianity

Lesser versions of the NO POPE variety that occur are:

Coptic - similar to Orthodoxy, largely limited to Egypt

Ethiopian - similar to Orthodoxy, largely limited to Abyssinia/Ethiopia

Syrian - similar to Orthodoxy, largely limited to Syria, Iraq, and Iran

Nestorianism - kind of similar to Orthodoxy, largely limited to the Eastern Mediterranean region, but its influence on the rest of Christianity leads to the cult of Mary as the Mother of God, you can still find this form of Christianity in the Marsh Arab region of Iraq.

Saint Thomas Christians in all along the Silk Route, India and even in China during the medieval period, your guess is as good as mine, but I know they were not in the Pope's or the Byzantine Emperor's pockets.

Until about 1200 AD, the Popes were absolutely not in a position to threaten anyone and most usually were kissing anyone's ass that would keep them from being slaughtered by whichever of the invaders was at the gates of Rome this week. So, from a real, historical perspective, until the Crusades, there are as many as ten "flavours" of Christianity in practice. Only late in the Medieval period is Rome the only contender left standing in Europe, but that only sets the stage for the Protestant movement.

So, honestly, the Popes were not "all that" until very late in the Medieval period. The Catholic monks write it differently of course, but it's just not true. "The physical evidence is contrary to the propaganda", as my old History of Pre-Modern Europe professor used to say. I mean, you have things like the Pornocracy of Marozia and all the Anti-popes before and after. From 867 until 1049, being "elected" Pope was a lot like contracting a disease with a rapid onset and low chance of survival.

So my contention is that the Pope shouldn't even pop up as a menace to the player until some time after 1050, but after that, he should be on the player like a bad rash.

Then there is the Jewish state of the Khazars.... That one caused all manner of problems for the boys in Rome and Constantinople

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Now for more about the Khazars...

Wikipedia said:

The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people who created one of the largest states of medieval Eurasia, Khazaria, with its capital at Atil. Astride one of the major arteries of commerce between northern Europe and southwestern Asia, Khazaria commanded the western marches of the Silk Road and played a key commercial role as a crossroad between China, the Middle East, and Europe.

Khazaria served as a buffer state between Europe and the rising tide of Islamic conquest and enjoyed a strategic entente with the Christian Byzantine empire throughout the period of the Arab–Khazar Wars. The Khazars successfully staved off attempts by armies of the Umayyad Caliphate, beginning in 642, to penetrate north of the Caucasus. Beginning in the 8th century, the Khazar royalty and much of the aristocracy are reported to have converted to Judaism, though the populace remained multiconfessional and polyethnic. Between 965 and 969, the Khazar state was conquered by the Kievan Rus under Sviatoslav I of Kiev, who conquered Atil in 967.

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Wikipedia said:

Bulan was a Khazar king who led the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. His name means "elk" in Old Turkic. In modern Turkish, it means The one who finds (Bul + an). The date of his reign is unknown, as the date of the conversion is hotly disputed, though it is certain that Bulan reigned some time between the mid-700s and the mid-800s. Nor is it settled whether Bulan was the Bek or the Khagan of the Khazars.

D. M. Dunlop was certain that Bulan was a Khagan; however, more recent works, such as The Jews of Khazaria by Kevin Brook, assume that he was the Bek due to references to him leading military campaigns. Khazar tradition held that before his own conversion, Bulan was religiously unaffiliated. In his quest to discover which of the three Abrahamic religions would shape his own religious beliefs, he invited representatives from each to explain their fundamental tenets. In the end, he chose Judaism.

In the Khazar Correspondence, King Joseph traces his lineage back to Bulan. He refers to the reforming Khazar ruler Obadiah as being one of "the sons of the sons of Bulan". While Brook assumes this makes Obadiah Bulan's grandson, the Hebrew phrase is less definitive and may allude to a more remote descent. The royal descendants of Bulan are referred to by Khazar researchers as Bulanids, though their self-designation is unknown.

The name Sabriel is given in the Schechter Letter (roughly contemporaneous with King Joseph's letter) for the Khazar king who led the conversion to Judaism. The Schechter Letter also gives Sabriel at least a partial Jewish/Israelite ancestry. Sabriel is described as having waged successful campaigns in the Caucasus and Iranian Azerbaijan, possibly as part of the Khazar-Arab wars.

His wife, Serakh, is described as a Jew and as encouraging him to study and adopt Judaism. The Schechter Letter is silent on the issue of whether Sabriel was in fact Bulan; in fact, the name Bulan does not appear in that document.

Khazar scholars sometimes refer to the king who led the Khazar conversion to Judaism as "Bulan Sabriel", though it is conceivable that they may have been different people. In The History of the Jewish Khazars, for instance, D. M. Dunlop examined (and ultimately rejected) the theory of other scholars that Sabriel in fact referred to Obadiah.

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Also another article on HistoryToday (LINK)

More about Arianism:

Wikipedia said:

However, during the time of Arianism's flowering in Constantinople, the Gothic convert Ulfilas (later the subject of the letter of Auxentius cited above) was sent as a missionary to the Gothic barbarians across the Danube, a mission favored for political reasons by emperor Constantius II. Ulfilas' initial success in converting this Germanic people to an Arian form of Christianity was strengthened by later events. When the Germanic peoples entered the Roman Empire and founded successor-kingdoms in the western part, most had been Arian Christians for more than a century.

The conflict in the 4th century had seen Arian and Nicene factions struggling for control of the Church. In contrast, in the Arian German kingdoms established on the wreckage of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, there were entirely separate Arian and Nicene Churches with parallel hierarchies, each serving different sets of believers. The Germanic elites were Arians, and the majority population was Nicene. Many scholars see the persistence of Germanic Arianism as a strategy that was followed in order to differentiate the Germanic elite from the local inhabitants and their culture and also to maintain the Germanic elite's separate group identity.[citation needed]

Most Germanic tribes were generally tolerant of the Nicene beliefs of their subjects. However, the Vandals tried for several decades to force their Arian beliefs on their North African Nicene subjects, exiling Nicene clergy, dissolving monasteries, and exercising heavy pressure on non-conforming Christians.

By the beginning of the 8th century, these kingdoms had either been conquered by Nicene neighbors (Ostrogoths, Vandals, Burgundians) or their rulers had accepted Nicene Christianity (Visigoths, Lombards).

The Franks and the Anglo-Saxons were unique among the Germanic peoples in that they entered the empire as pagans and converted to Nicene (Catholic) Christianity directly, guided by their kings, Clovis and Æthelberht of Kent.

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Okay, here is where I say Wikipedia is wrong/not complete in its description. The Welsh were not Nicene, Christianity was invested among the Britons before Constantine converted and two full centuries before the Council of Nicaea, and it was their missionaries that were at work among the Franks and Anglo-Saxons. The two kings named in the article may have gone in the direction of Rome, but the bulk of those who thought themselves who called themselves Christians within their kingdoms were very much not Nicene in belief. Whoever wrote this article swept all Anglo-Saxons into a single pot, the same way people who say "All native Americans used wampum, lived in teepees and had totem poles" -- which they most assuredly did not. Kent was strongly under the political influence of the Frankish Kings, while the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Wessex, East Anglia, Essex, Mercia, Northumbria (later Jorvik), and Sussex were under varying influence of the Welsh missionaries and less so that of the Frankish kings.

Even in Frankish controlled territories, the so-called Celtic church had a long tradition and was deeply embedded, especially among the Gauls (French Celts).

In the case of Æthelberht of Kent, he married Bertha, the Christian daughter of Charibert, king of the Franks, so of course he cozened up to the Roman faith. He was trying to get Frankish aid to throw off Mercian control of his kingdom.

Druids & Celtic Paganism

The Romans did such a thorough job killing off the Druids in the first century AD that it is difficult to believe that it continued among the Gauls and Britons. What we have from history is that by the end of the first century AD, Britain had become a haven for Christianity and it had taken firm root there.

What cannot be said is what the Picts or early Irish did in terms of faith. The Irish and Picts represent what is generally called Celtic I cultures, while the Gauls and Britons are generally termed Celtic II cultures.

The Celtic I cultures entered Britain before 1200 BC, whereas the Celtic II cultures arrived in a second wave after 1200 BC.

Stonehenge and other ancient stone/wood structures like Stonehenge were constructed by the Celtic I culture in Britain and France. These sites were avoided like haunted graveyards by the Celtic II cultures and their Druids.

What the Picts and early Irish believed, I can't say because I don't know and I am not in the habit of consulting my Atlantean Spirit Guide for answers about the past. The archaeological evidence indicates they believed something rather more shamanistic than the organized Druidic religion of the Celtic II cultures.

But after the Roman legions finished with the Druids on the Isle of Mona and defeated Boudicca, Celtic II culture suffered a collapse and picked up Christianity.

What Celtic I cultures did, I can't say or guess.

Norse Paganism

As Nightinggale pointed out, history is written about kings and not common folks. I fully agree. But I am careful to not speculate too much about what non-Christians did or how many existed. What we do know is that Anglo-Saxons kings continued the practice of ship burials well into the Christian era. We also have record of numerous "Christian" kings among the Anglo-Saxons who had a foot in both camps and usually had a Christian wife and a Pagan wife. So the truth is vastly more complicated than "they all miraculously converted on such and such a date."

We know from the Icelandic sagas that as late as 1000 AD, paganism was still found practiced among the Norse in Iceland and Greenland. And it is possible that Greenland and Iceland were for a time a place of retreat for pagan Vikings from an increasingly Christian dominated Europe, but that is speculative and not factual.

Pre-Celtic Isolates

Before the Celtic I and II cultures rolled into Western Europe, there existed a native culture about which very little is known. The Basque represent the last genetic and linguistic evidence of that culture. We know that they inhabited all of Iberia, France, and the British Isles before the Celtic I migration. They were there when there was still a Doggerland and the sea had not yet risen to the modern level at the end of the last glacial maximum. How many there were and what they practiced in terms of religion is pure speculation and I won't bother with it.

But just as the Basque managed to survive into the modern era, there were likely to be hold-outs of similar strains in remote regions of the British Isles. How long they held out, I can't guess, but there is some evidence that the Picts during the times of the Romans may have been at least partially of this culture and genome.

How that might play out in M:C, I can't yet guess.

Slavic Paganism

Well, historically speaking, the Celts and the Slavs represent branches of the same mother culture. Many books that I've read will use terms like "Proto-Slavic" and "Celto-Slavic", and there is strong evidence that links them to the Scytho-Sarmatian cultures.

How this relates to M:C is that the flavor of paganism practiced by the Slavs during the period covered in M:C is that it was similar to that of the Celtic II cultures, but had evolved into a different general form. There was a good deal of human sacrificing and bloodletting, just like the Druids did. But the color and texture of the Slavic form of paganism was still largely related to shamanistic roots.

The Viking cultures and Norse paganism shares human sacrificing and bloodletting, but it would be incorrect to assume that they were the same thing.

Several years ago there was a Celtic II altar found constructed of human bones and skulls. The iron III content of the soil around the site was anomalous, meaning that a whole lot of human blood had soaked into the ground at that site. The estimate based on the bone count placed the number in the hundreds....

Until that site was discovered, Julius Caesar's account of the Gauls and their Druids had been discounted as propaganda and embellishment. Now people in the field are beginning to think he may have been very restrained in his account of Gaulish religion.

The Slavs were said to do something similar, but on a much more modest scale.

Maybe Religion is a good opportunity to put the Civics system to use (ie reactivating the Civics system from base Civ4Bts, and let Religion be one category). IIRC it's possible to have some Civics cause relative like/dislike of certain others, and to have leaders get a propensity for certain Civics. I think it's also possible to coerce defeated foreigners to convert to one of your Civics using a diplomacy demand. That would allow for historicity in starting conditions and religious propensities, while also allowing for the possibility of conversion and a variety of intriguing religious/diplomatic circumstances.

Other possible Civics categories:

Government:
Tribalism
Despotism
Feudalism
Absolute Monarchy
Constitutional Monarchy

Philosophy:
Superstition
Dogmatism
Scholasticism
Enlightenment

Royal Favour:
Favour Nobility
Favour Clergy
Favour Peasantry

This is good game changing information Doc (do you mind if I call you Doc?), thanks again .

@orlanth

I am starting a thread concerning Civics in M:C and I'll add your suggestions there.

@Orlanth - I see Religion and Civics as pretty much inseparable since the morality of a religion reflects the morality and ideals of the culture and it is the morality and ideals of a society that shape its civics. Civics and Religions are a lot like that "which came first? the chicken or the egg." Neither could really exist without the other.

@Kairic - sure, you can call me "Doc" LOL

I was reading The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity again to refresh my memory about the role of religion in the period covered by M:C and there was some information in there that I had forgotten. The Celtic flavour of Christianity was distinctly different from the Catholic flavor, but here is where we have to distinguish between the Roman Catholics and the Byzantine Catholics, because the Great Schism between Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity hadn't yet happened. The Celtic Christians considered themselves the "true original form of Christianity" and saw the doings at Nicaea as nothing less than the work of the Devil. Specifically, they saw all the hierarchy and Roman pagentry as "pagan" (which is was, it was nothing more than the Cult of the Divine Emperor dressed up with a Cross). So right from the start there was a good deal of calling each other heretics between the factions. They agreed on a few things (very few), like the Gnostics and Marcionists being a lot of loonies. They didn't agree on the topic of Arianism. The Official line was the Arians had it all wrong. The Celts thought the Arians had gotten it only half-right.

(If you've see "The Matrix" you know everything there is to know about Gnosticism. And I could do a doctorate paper on Marcionism, but lets just reduce it to saying that it was the "Scientology" of the late Roman Era)

There was a good deal more name-calling and damning each other to Hell, but then the "barbarians" did everyone a favor and kept the boys from fighting... by giving them all something more "real and in your face" to worry about... like barbarians...

I feel like saying "snakes on a plane, mofo" for no particular reason. I really need to get out more....

Anyway, they each decide that he and he alone is right and all the others are wrong, but manage to come to a sort of arrangement that each will deal with the barbarians in front of him. Which kept their hands busy for about 350-400 years... then the fun starts again....

There was a serious territory struggle that took place in the 800s and 900s between the factions. Arianism takes a sharp nose-dive about this time, so the Arian missionary efforts get gobbled up by the Celtics, the Romans, and the Byzantines. It comes to a crisis in the area that would be modern Switzerland, Barvaria, Austria and Czech Republic where formerly Burgundian and Ostrogothic Arianism had taken firm root. Some of the invested Arian missions didn't want to go quietly into the night and resisted being taken over by what they believed were idolatrous heretics. Of course this meant nothing to the boys in Rome or Constantinople, but the Celts were feeling the pinch about this same time and under increasingly heavy pressure to conform to the Nicene Creed. The Arians saw a kind of fellowship in this, so they requested Celtic missions at Altomünster, St. Gallen, Vienna and Würzburg to name a few. So the Arian Germans had self-elected to convert to Celtic Christianity, which righteously pissed off the boys in Rome, Aachen, Constaninople.

There was of course all manner of legal hijinx where the various factions tried to get one king or another or the Emperor to "make them not do that." When the Pope sees that the Emperor is going to favor his own cause, the pope decides it's high time that the West had an Emperor to champion the cause of the Pope... erm, Rome, yeah that's it, Rome. Charlemagne steps up and says something like, "I could do that." And tah-dah! The Holy Roman Empire is born.

It ground on like that for a while with plenty of people being excommunicated or declared heretics. The usual stuff that happens when people disagree about whose imaginary friend is stronger... Eventually, the powers that be worked things out among themselves and made an arrangement that divided the territory in such a fashion as to shut out the Celts. But the Celts, not being idiots, had seen that coming.

The Celtic solution was to smile and let the boys in Rome and Constantinople have their way, and shift their missionary work into those regions considered by the powers in Rome and Constantinople to be too far away and too dangerous to undertake missions (read as "where those heretics can't interfere with God's work") - Since they thought the Byzantines, Romans, Franks, and all those heretics in the South were damned, they aimed their wagons at the Vikings and their buddies to the East, who were just heathen barbarians and not apostate heretic idol-worshipers calling themselves Christians.... So many of the martyrs and saints associated with the conversion of the Vikings in Europe began life in Celtic Abbeys in places like Lindisfarne, Mona, and Iona, that it's like reading a who's who of Celtic Christianity.

Basically, the Celtic church decided to move where the work was "most needed". I think from the perspective of Rome and Constantinople, the Celtic missionaries had volunteered to be canon fodder. Anyway, the Celtic Christians finally caved in and started conforming to the Nicene Creed about 1000 AD, but it was a slow and incomplete process, where each Abbey adopted the Creed at different dates, and any who didn't like the new way would go do missionary work among the heathen barbarians in the East... so there were still non-Nicene Celtic Christians as late as 1300, most of them among... here it comes... the Vikings in places like Iceland and their buddies back east... way east, like Finland east.

So right up on the edge of the Protestant movement, there are Celtic Christians still talking smack about the heresy of the Romans....

There was of course, a violent reply to this from the boys in Rome, the Inquisition, Witch-hunters (a great new unit idea!), expulsions of the Jews, and all that rich, chewy Medieval goodness.

Fullerene said:

Adding religion code sounds like interesting task. I guess the different religions and their effects are defined in the XML and C++ takes care of storing religions for units and calculating their effects.You could have religion for every unit and the state religion.

Do you have any thoughts of the matter? Maybe religions could be also defined in Civ4CivicInfos.XML.

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orlanth said:

If you make it flexibly enough, it could also be used for other mods that aren't based around religions (ie units could have an Ideology like Communist/Fascist/Democratic in WW2 mod, or a Race or Species in scifi or Fantasy mods).

The most flexible way to do it would be to let a Promotion in XML designate the category you belong to. That way it can be modded to have the effects you want in any game (or could be modded to have relatively modest or no direct effects if you want.) It might be good to add a new PromotionInfos.xml tag called <PromotionGroup> , where you can only have a max of one Promotion from any category. For example PROMOTION_CATHOLIC, PROMOTION_PAGAN, PROMOTION_MUSLIM would all have <PromotionGroup>RELIGION</PromotionGroup>.

Going with Nightingale's idea where things like Religion or Race can potentially be passed down from parents to offspring, a tag <iInheritsonCityGrowth> to give a chance that Promotion is inherited when a new unit is born in that city . When city growth occurs (which is not often) it can check the current units in that city, and use a weighted average of these chances to determine what the new unit will have.

If you want to allow Civics to have some effects relating to members, you could create a Civ4CivicInfos xml tag <PromotionGroupBonuses> that can be modded to affect certain ones. For example you could choose a Civic which applies bonuses to one type and penalties to others, or choose a Tolerance Civic without big effects, for empires which have a diverse mix of citizens.

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This would actually be a major undertaking, with all that it involves, but what is the effects of Religion is the question? Looking to Civ4 for inspiration:

Units have a religion, perhaps shown with promotions as orlanth stated
You can set your state religion, chosen from the religions that are in your cities
Religions spread randomly from city to city
You can use Missionaries to spread religion

State religion makes your people more happy and more productive
-Extra Culture Produce
-Can only build religious buildings pertaining to the Religions in the City
-Bonuses from Shrines

Religion is effected by your Civis
-Organized Religion: increased production of Religious Buildings
-Theocracy: Grants two additional experience points to units trained, stops the spread of none-state religions
-Pacifism: Increases Great Person birthrate, increases support cost of troops. Not really applicable in M:C
-Free Religion: Has no state religion, get happiness from reach none state religion in a city, boost to scientific research

I haven't really put much thought into it yet, but there are some ideas to start with...

The race/religion promotion system might not be that tricky to implement. A bit of brainstorming, which isn't thought through, but sounds good as input to to concept consideration:

1. Use a generic name like faction, which can cover race, religion, politics etc.
2. Add a bool to promotions to tell if it is a faction promotion
3. All faction promotions should be first in XML
4. Promotions should be able to give bonus vs promotions (like they can cs mounted units etc)
5. Promotions should be able to give bonus vs units WITHOUT a specific promotion (all non something)

I find 2+3 interesting. 2 mean the entire setup is in XML only while 3 allows the DLL to cache the number of factions and loop a tiny bit of the promotions when it just needs the factions, which will presumably avoid most slowdowns for this new addition.

On city growth, if all units has a faction, then we can simply make a random number based on population in the city, loop citizens and once the random number have been reached, the faction is read and used for the new unit.

We may consider a JIT array type for factions.

We can consider stuff like caches later. Maybe a unit should have an int telling which faction it belongs to to avoid looping each time the info is needed. This is minor details and not really important for the design.

pacifism could give a boost to none military production(yields), and a reduction to military production (yields) or something along those lines as an alternate to great people, or possibly give a boost to education rates thus speeding up the production of masters..

The other thing is diplomatic relation for religion. Same is a + different is a -.

Some more ideas:

Cities without preachers may cause that religion to decay.
Multiple religions co-existing may be a bonus if well handled or may produce clashes if poorly handled.
You may expell certain religious minorities to obtain Papal favour.
You may get the title of Catholic King and have a boost when dealing with other Christian Kings.

Nightinggale said:

The race/religion promotion system might not be that tricky to implement. A bit of brainstorming, which isn't thought through, but sounds good as input to to concept consideration:

1. Use a generic name like faction, which can cover race, religion, politics etc.
2. Add a bool to promotions to tell if it is a faction promotion
3. All faction promotions should be first in XML
4. Promotions should be able to give bonus vs promotions (like they can cs mounted units etc)
5. Promotions should be able to give bonus vs units WITHOUT a specific promotion (all non something)

I find 2+3 interesting. 2 mean the entire setup is in XML only while 3 allows the DLL to cache the number of factions and loop a tiny bit of the promotions when it just needs the factions, which will presumably avoid most slowdowns for this new addition.

On city growth, if all units has a faction, then we can simply make a random number based on population in the city, loop citizens and once the random number have been reached, the faction is read and used for the new unit.

We may consider a JIT array type for factions.

We can consider stuff like caches later. Maybe a unit should have an int telling which faction it belongs to to avoid looping each time the info is needed. This is minor details and not really important for the design.

Click to expand...

What if you one day want unit to have religion, race and ideology? Maybe there should be different categories for factions? You could of course let unit have multiple faction promotions, but then it might lead to situation where unit has 2 or more religions. That wouldn't make much sense. I think some more XML work would be needed.

Fullerene said:

What if you one day want unit to have religion, race and ideology? Maybe there should be different categories for factions? You could of course let unit have multiple faction promotions, but then it might lead to situation where unit has 2 or more religions. That wouldn't make much sense. I think some more XML work would be needed.

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Hmmm... multiple factions for each unit

Rather than a bool to tell if a promotion is a faction, we could use an int and set it to default = -1. Next we assign faction types to each, calling them 0, 1 and so on. Each unit then has one of each type. We could benefit from assigning strings to those numbers meaning they can be FACTION_RELIGION, FACTION_RACE etc.

Seems like a bit of an overkill for a "what if" system though. I propose just using an int for now and then make the DLL use it as a bool for now. We can then add stuff to the DLL later if it turns out to be needed without heavy XML modifications.

How do you make the faction promotion unavailable when unit gains experience? So that unit can't be upgraded to christianity after winning battle against bear. Instead the religion promotions are gained another ways.

Easiest way I can think is that religion promotion has itself as prereq promotion. Is there better ways?

Fullerene said:

How do you make the faction promotion unavailable when unit gains experience? So that unit can't be upgraded to christianity after winning battle against bear. Instead the religion promotions are gained another ways.

Easiest way I can think is that religion promotion has itself as prereq promotion. Is there better ways?

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Yes, I have added a new tag for just this thing... use the tag <bNonePromotion>1</bNonePromotion>. Look at PROMOTION_BRUTE for example, any NonePromotion Promotion can not be gained through the experience system. These are reserved for things like Professions or Unit specific promotions.

Also, when you are naming the Religion Promotions you could actually call them UNIT_RELIGION_CATHOLIC instead of saying PROMOTION_CATHOLIC for example.

Ok, I added Catholic,Orthdox,Islam and Judaism promotions.Maybe some one else will later complete the list. I gave noblemen free catholic promotion, to just to test the concept. And indeed small cross appears now next to his name

So, how do we spread the religions? I think Civilizations should have a starting religion that is given to initial units. Or maybe some Civilizations (Vikings etc) start as pagan (no religion). Units born in city inherits religion from the other units in the city. Units that immigrate 'from distant lands' can have different religion, for example Judaism.

Still have to ensure in the SDK that unit can have only one religion promotion at time.

A practical question: what are you working on? As this is a new feature, it should be in the develop branch, or maybe even a branch of it's own.

Fullerene said:

Or maybe some Civilizations (Vikings etc) start as pagan (no religion).

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That is truly ridicules. While vikings may have been called pagans, they were absolutely not without religion. The whole concept about having no religion is bogus, both ingame and in real life.

Fullerene said:

Still have to ensure in the SDK that unit can have only one religion promotion at time.

Click to expand...

Do you want to try to code something or do you want me to implement a one-religon only feature?

Nightinggale said:

That is truly ridicules. While vikings may have been called pagans, they were absolutely not without religion. The whole concept about having no religion is bogus, both ingame and in real life.

Do you want to try to code something or do you want me to implemionent a one-religon only feature?

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Calm down, calm down People may not realize that Nordic (or however you best describe it) is actually a real religion. I have friends that pray to and worship the Nordic gods even today.

We should set up like what we have with Civics in that we can have several types of "faction" promotions. Perhaps we need to create "faction" types, like how there are FF types, but they are actually Civilization Traits. Each faction can have attributes like how many are allowed on each player, which would be 1 in the case of religion, and perhaps information like how the faction spreads.

Nightinggale said:

A practical question: what are you working on? As this is a new feature, it should be in the develop branch, or maybe even a branch of it's own.

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I'm working on develop branch.

Nightinggale said:

That is truly ridicules. While vikings may have been called pagans, they were absolutely not without religion. The whole concept about having no religion is bogus, both ingame and in real life.

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I was simply talking that gameplay wise they don't have religion, thinking of civ4 style. Of course we can add 'pagan' religion too, maybe even all the different pagan religions, why not. It's just might be overkill.

Nightinggale said:

Do you want to try to code something or do you want me to implement a one-religon only feature?

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Unless you have a solution ready in your head, I'd like to try myself. You can give advises of course.