Religions: Asatru and Shinto

[stoferb]

You just need to remember that the "t" and "h" are pronounced as separate letters not as the one "th" sound. Or was it the other way round. It is so long since I studied the Sagas.

The "th"-sound has died out here in scandinavia long time ago but I think the english "th" is pretty much identical to how that rune was supposed to sound.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Remember, unless you have the multiple religion spread option on, spread rates only affect cities without a religion present. Which is why most cities end up with the earlier religions.

 

[Vokarya]

I know and agree with that philosophy. However since you have re-shuffled religion foundations the spread rates weren't updated I guess.
E.g Kemetism was pushed later

Religion old suggestion
Hinduism 20 35
Kemetism 20 25
Zoroastrianism 25 30
Judaism 30 -
Buddhism 35 -
Hellenism 40 -
Naghualism 45 40
Christianity 50 60
Confucianism 50 45
Taoism 50 -
Islam 60 -
Asatru 50 -
Shinto 40 -

I'll increase Hinduism to 30, but I don't really want to change any of the others at this point.

 

[Vokarya]

Temples are the second building for any religion. Unlike Monasteries, they are not as strictly planned. Temples have the following factors in common:

• Cost 80 or 90
• 1 Priest slot
• +2-3 if temple's religion is State Religion
• +1-3
• Spreads appropriate religion

Just about each Temple has a different set of bonuses:

Religion Cost SR Spread Special
Buddhism 90 2 1 2 +1
Christianity 90 3 1 2
Confucianism 80 2 1 0
Hellenism 80 2 1 1
Hinduism 80 2 2 1
Islam 90 3 1 2
Judaism 80 2 2 1
Kemetism 90 2 2 2 +1
Naghualism 90 2 3 2
Taoism 90 2 2 2 +1
Zoroastrianism 90 3 2 2

Oddly enough, the only factor that seems to exactly correlate with the 80/90 cost split is whether or not the temple has a spread factor of 0-1 or 2; all the less than 2's cost 80, while the 2's cost 90. The 90-cost temples also have generally better stats, usually either +3 happy from State Religion or another bonus. I'm going with 90's for both Asatru and Shinto, as your established cities shouldn't have much trouble with them.

The Asatru Temple gets a +3 happy/+1 culture split with a bit of a twist. Instead of being a flat +3 from Asatru being a State Religion, it gets +2 happy from State Religion and +1 happy from Iron.
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The Shinto Temple, as a more ritualistic religion, goes for a +2 happy/+3 culture split. This matches Naghualism's Temple of Quetzalcoatl.
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[Vokarya]

Where there are Temples, there must also be Cathedrals. The new religions get Pantheons, but the only real difference between the two is that Cathedrals require Music while Pantheons are available at Mathematics. For religions that don't get founded until the Medieval Era (with the exception of Choose Religions), the difference is practically trivial and I'm going to make both of these Cathedrals by class.

The abilities of a Cathedral are:

• Requires X (2 on Duel, 3 on Standard, goes up from there) Temples per Cathedral
• +1 , additional +2 for the State Religion, additional +1 from Incense
• +50% culture
• 2 Priest slots
• Pick one resource to double production speed and another resource to grant +15% production speed

The few changes that I noticed are: Hellenic Pantheon lacks the default +1 happiness, Confucian Academy converts 20% of the Culture to Science, and Temple of Tlaloc converts 15% of the Culture to Gold and swaps the Incense bonus to a bonus with Hemp.

I don't really want to mess too much with the Cathedral plan. For the Asatru Cathedral, I'm calling it the Asatru Festhall and changing the happy bonus from Incense to Alcohol. I can imagine doing something with the Priest slots, but again I don't want to deviate it from the general plot. The resource-boosters are Iron (in-theme) and Silver (no other Cathedral uses it).
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The Shinto Cathedral's theme name is the Shinto Jingu. I think this is the best standard name. The resource-boosters here are Copper and Gold, which matches the Buddhist Stupa.
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[Vokarya]

Shrines are one of the big rewards for founding a religion.

Just about all Shrines have the following abilities:

• Buildable by a Great Prophet in the Holy City
• +4
• +1 for Great Prophets
• 3 Priest slots
• +1 Wonder capacity
• +some commerce (usually +1 ) per city with the shrine's religion

There is a little bit of variance in some of the Shrines. Pir-e Sabz gives +10% culture in all cities. Teotihuacan gives +1 specialist per Quarry in city radius, which can be tricky to use because you have no control over where the holy city will be. Statue of Zeus keeps the +100% enemy War Weariness from when it was a regular Wonder and not a Shrine. Karnak provides +1 culture per Specialist. Temple of Solomon provides +15% gold on top of the +1 gold/city/turn. (Kong Miao's Morale promotion is going away very shortly - that is just too powerful an effect.)

For the Asatru Shrine, I'm calling it Uppsala Temple. This is an actual Asatru holy site, and the shrine will just get the standard abilities. I don't really want to change it up too much.
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The Shinto Shrine is Ise Jingu. It does get both +1 and +1 per city with Shinto. I think giving both gold and culture will help boost a relatively new city. I'm pretty sure the game code causes religions to found in cities that aren't already holy cities, and definitely not in capitals if there is any other choice.
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[triplebassist]

In my experience, the game tries to found religions in the largest non-capital city that isn't already a Holy City. I don't think that the Holy City of either of these new religons will be anything but a solid mid-game city.

 

[<Nexus>]

In my experience, the game tries to found religions in the largest non-capital city that isn't already a Holy City. I don't think that the Holy City of either of these new religons will be anything but a solid mid-game city.

It doesn't matter for the game if it is a holy city already or not. The game simply picks one of the largest cities. I have a game where I have founded 3 religions.

Teotihuacan gives +1 specialist per Quarry in city radius

Maybe we could change it to something more general, like +1 per quarry in every city?

 

[Vokarya]

In my experience, the game tries to found religions in the largest non-capital city that isn't already a Holy City. I don't think that the Holy City of either of these new religons will be anything but a solid mid-game city.

Looking at the code points to it being based on the population, the number of religions already present in each city, and a random factor, with a big penalty for capitals.

 

[RyoHazuki]

In my experience, recently founded cities are the most common target, by far.

 

[Vokarya]

Out of all the things that come available from a Religion, Wonders are by far the most varied. The effects of the Wonders are all over the map. I specifically only want to do one Wonder per religion; I think more than that violates the spirit of competition that I think is essential to Wonders.

The Asatru wonder was very difficult to come up with. I couldn't really find another holy building, and I want to let the National Wonder trio replacement be unique to Kemetism. I settled on The Sagas as the Asatru Wonder. It took some hunting to find appropriate artworks. The building button is Fall from Heaven 2's Ancient Chants tech, the building graphic is FFH2's Necronomicon minus a team-colored node on one side, and the movie (which is actually fairly short) is a Heroic Epic that I found in a movie pack that I had.

Once I had the concept, the effects were fairly simple to come up with: no other Wonder grants global XP before Brandenburg Gate, so I thought that was a cool effect, and then a little culture bonus didn't hurt. I also decided to set this at Music tech, which is technically in the previous era, but it's not on the same tech path as Rudder, so I think it fits.
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On the other hand, the Shinto wonder was really easy to decide on: Itsukushima Shrine. I just had to pick effects. What I chose is to make it a water-focused building, and give it +1 food and commerce from all water tiles, and then give +1 happiness from all Shinto-related buildings.
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[Vokarya]

Just about the last thing we have to add to fully create a religion is the promotion. The religion-specific promos are quite powerful, as they are restricted to Led by Warlord units.

Here is what I have settled on for ideas.

The Asatru promotion is Berserk. I would like to change the current Berzerker promotions to Rage to avoid any confusion, but we don't have to do that. The bonuses for Berserk are:

• +20% city attack
• +10% against melee, archery, and gunpowder units
• No penalty for attacking from sea

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Berserk still has a penalty for attacking across rivers, because I wanted to avoid having two religion promos with the same effect and Holy Trinity has that effect. I also didn't want Berserk to have too many abilities, or to be too redundant on a Seafaring leader.

For Shinto, I didn't want to do Bushido. I think Bushido isn't tied so strongly to Shinto that it needs to be used. So I thought about other ideas and eventually settled on Purity as the promotion. The bonuses are:

• Can heal while moving
• Heals +10% damage per turn in enemy lands
• 1 first strike chance

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Purity shares the "can heal while moving" ability with Zen, but it's such a good fit and a great ability to have (and it's restricted to Led by Warlord units, so it won't get out of control) that I decided to keep it in this case.

 

[Vokarya]

One last thing I forgot to cover is adding these new religions as Favored Religions for certain leaders. For Shinto, I would like to give both Tokugawa and Hirohito Shinto as their favored religion (Tokugawa has Buddhism currently, Hirohito has no favored religion).

For Asatru, it would naturally go to Ragnar. Do you think it would be horribly anachronistic if I gave Asatru as favored religion to Boudica and Brennus? That would give them a favored religion.

Finally, is there anything else I may have missed? I think we've got everything to make these two religions stand up with the rest of AND's religions.

 

[Arakhor]

Shinto is an obvious shoe-in for the two Japanese leaders. Since we don't have a generic religion for early Celtic/Germanic belief, Asatru would be just about acceptable for Boudica and Brennus, I think.

 

[<Nexus>]

Do you think it would be horribly anachronistic if I gave Asatru as favored religion to Boudica and Brennus? That would give them a favored religion.

Yes, I think it would. As long as we don't have druidic traditions, the celts have no religion to favor, IMO.

Finally, is there anything else I may have missed? I think we've got everything to make these two religions stand up with the rest of AND's religions.

I don't think there is anything else. Let's get to testings

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Although anachronistic, it looks good to me to have Asatru as favorite religion for Brennus and Boudica.