Map making tips needed: how to stop rampant religion spread

[TravellingHat]

Greetings all

I've been working on a map, and I'm pretty pleased with the geography, but sadly it suffers from a fatal flaw: rampant religion spread. Specifically, the Bannor and Malakim are neighbours, and one of them always founds the Order. Then it's just a matter of time before that spreads to pretty much everyone. I've tried to use the Grigori as a barrier, dense jungles, wide deserts, huge mountain ranges, even oceans (though they can be navigated by island chains) - nothing makes any difference.

The only continent that's unaffected is a mixed dwarven/elven land where the Runes and Fellowship get founded, but there's a massive polar waste between them, so they have a chance to get established. However, I don't have enough map space to put such big areas of mostly dead space around the Bannor/Malakim.

No one seems to go after Overlords, even though plenty have port capitals (tryng to encourage someone - anyone! - to found OO).

It makes for a fatally dull game when most of the world convert to good. I don't really want to quarantine the good civs together, as I like to have a mix of neighbours to be friends and enemies, but I think there's no other option. This will also inevitably make a good-aligned super bloc, which may also be game destroying.

I have a few pre-placed barbarian cities, and I think beefing them up might give the Bannor and Malakim something to do other than all that praying, but I'm concerned about over penalising them and having two of the most powerful good civs crippled (I know, there's no pleasing some people).

Any suggestions? I'm a bit stuck for ideas. If I need to scrap the map and start again, then so be it, because it doesn't work to my satisfaction anyway.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Do you have a large river connecting their cities, or areas nearby? Do they both have coastal access? Trade on rivers is very easy, and coastal trade easy too.
Of course, that's just passive spread, all ais (even BtS vanilla) really like to spread religion. No shame in giving them an extra tech along the path to their religion to help each found their own religion at about the same time.
If you want to discourage missionary spread, you could palce a couple barrows between them, guarded by high strength barb units (give them the buccaneer promotion to make them immobile.) Maybe their acolytes etc. will get eaten by skeletons before spreading too much.
Also, you could give them a starting diplo penalty to discourage early open borders (though Sabathiel is REALLY easy to get OB with...)

 

[Good Sauce]

It could also be the choice of civs on your map. Certain civs seem to prefer certain religion, perhaps throwing some more evil civs in the mix would help, or giving the evil civs there a boost. (gold and/or gems in the capitals fat cross usually helps a good bit)

 

[Wyrmhero]

Personally, I think that the passive spread of religion should be slowed down (except for CoE), as I have seen an entire map of mainly evil civs turn to the Order (leaving me & the Infernals to be crusaded upon), thanks to Varn Gosam & Ethne The White founding it & spreading it.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Trade routes and open borders have nothing to do with passive religion spread. Only two things do:

1) Map size
2) Whether or not the holy shrine has been built

The closer to a holy city a city is, and the larger the map, the more likely the religion is to spread. The result of this calculation is doubled for every city if the shrine exists.

The only change to a map you can make to slow down passive spread is shrinking the map.

 

[Demus]

try sto's alignment options modmod, turning on the "religion war" option ;-). Makes sure no religion can be adopted that changes your alignment, and only the elven nations can adopt FoL.

Another option is the one Nikis mentioned: set the bannor en route to order, and the malakim to empyrean. This would prevent several other civs from getting those religions first though.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Trade routes and open borders have nothing to do with passive religion spread. Only two things do:

Are you sure? I have read that religions can only spread along a trade network. No route is required, but the possibility of a route must exist.
Also, open borders alows missionaries to enter, and the ai's build lots of missionaries. But they won't send them in if no OB, forcing them to rely on the slower passive spread.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

just wack Sheaim or Calabim in the mix somewhere, or possibly belsaraphs.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Are you sure? I have read that religions can only spread along a trade network. No route is required, but the possibility of a route must exist.
Also, open borders alows missionaries to enter, and the ai's build lots of missionaries. But they won't send them in if no OB, forcing them to rely on the slower passive spread.

It might be different in FfH. I noticed a religion I founder spread to someone who I didn't have trade with. I know anyone can research the tech and get a missionary but for some reason I don't think that happened. It was a while ago so I don't remember my reasoning so maybe it did and I'm just not remembering correctly.

 

[Sto]

You can take a look at CvCity::doReligion() to see exactly how religions are spread . In short, each turn , for each city , the process loop over each other cities . And if this city is connected to the city checked (not changed by FFH) , loop over religions this city has , assign a spread value . Then compare it to a random number to see if the religion is spread .

The spread value depend on the religion spread factor (<iSpreadFactor> , you can notice that order have a high spread factor) , and some global defines : RELIGION_SPREAD_DISTANCE_DIVISOR , RELIGION_SPREAD_RAND .

You can decrease or increase the religion spread factor for each religion , if you want to boost or slow down the spreading of each religions . You can increase RELIGION_SPREAD_DISTANCE_DIVISOR if you want that the distance reduce the chance of spreading . You can can increase RELIGION_SPREAD_RAND if you want that the spread of religion becomes less frequent .

Tcho !

 

[TravellingHat]

Thanks for all the advice. I have got the Sheaim and Calabim in there, and they convert to the Order just as readily as anyone else.

I think I'll build a new map, and take some care with the civ locations so as to use certain early religions as blockers (FoL has no effect on alighnment, and RoK won't except for evils). I'm also planning to make some barbarian mini-nations so there is not only a military threat, but hopefully their cultural boundaries will help.

EDIT: Well, back to my Slartibartvast role of world designer, and once again I'm in need of some advice. What I want is for the Sidar to be very cagey about offering open borders, being a highly secretive bunch. Ideally, I'd like them to have the personality of vanilla Tokugawa (no open borders before friendly). I'd rather not achieve this by diplomatic penalties, because I don't want them to be more likely to go to war, just very isolationist. They are getting a small diplomatic penalty with their immediate neighbours (Malakim and Calabim) anyway. Is this possible in a map file, and if so, how?

Thanks