Historical Religions VII 1.2

[Tomatekh]

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A basic version of my Historical Religions mod which I’ve been making for the series since Civ V. I made this mod more to begin to familiarize myself with VII’s modding than to release a finished product, so it’s a very early release.

Currently it adds 4 new religions to the game – Ayni (Andean), Hellenism (Greco-Roman), Pesedjet (Egyptian), and Southern Cult (Eastern Woodlands) – which should provide a base choice for all the current leaders. The mod also includes a configuration file allowing you to add/remove religions individually.

 

[Tomatekh]

Hey, everyone! I guess I’ve cursed myself to make a version of this mod until the end of time Actually, I was considering not bothering making it for VII considering how shallow the religion system is this time around. Even basics like pedia entries for the religions are gone (which is a shame because I actually enjoyed researching and writing them for VI and giving context to the name/symbol combinations I chose). But, after looking into it, I saw that it was a relatively straightforward port in that I could re-use the symbols and code structure I already made for VI.

Just to give some progress/thoughts:

- I feel like I’ve gotten the button close enough to the official ones. I’ve noticed mine are somewhat sharper when in-game (easy enough fixed by blurring them again) and that my star overlay / dot splatter needs to be more transparent. So, still tweaking it and I’ll fix those next time I do an update.

I am concerned about the quality of the symbols on the city bar. I don’t know if that’s a side effect of the sharpness or how I’m adding them. I’ll play around with it a little.

The official 24 in-game buttons only use about 11 colors. Is that intentional? I was going to try and go as distinct as possible with all my buttons (which should help with the city bar situation), but should I be limiting my colors to a small set?

- I know everyone wants leader preferences, I’m just not sure how possible it is at the moment. The game does include a FavoredReligions table that’s empty, but my attempts to add entries to it didn’t work, so the table might not do anything in VII. It’s possible I’m updating the database in the wrong age or something, but we might have to just hope Firaxis adds preferences back in at some point. Civ V did let you do it with lua. I’m looking into that but it’s probably a long shot for VII since VI didn’t let you.

- I do hope the content of this mod will eventually be comparable to the VI version, but it’s going to be a while before I update the mod with more religions. Although porting the stuff I made for VI is straightforward, it’s also extremely tedious, especially considering the number of religions I added to the VI version. I also have very little modding time at the moment. I know it seems like it would probably be easier for me to add a few religions at a time, but in the long run it’s actually easier for me to do one big content update instead of a lot of little ones.

Currently, I’m remaking a few of the symbols from VI that I no longer like as well as a few new religions. After that, I need to decide on a color scheme for all the religions ahead of time since colors seem baked in this time around.

If you guys can let me know of any problems you encounter, that would be great. Especially when starting from the Ancient Age since to test everything I just do Exploration Age starts to save time.

 

[notque]

Humble request for Bird Cult. Have been using your mods for so long, I don't know Civ without Bird Cult.

 

[Tomatekh]

Humble request for Bird Cult. Have been using your mods for so long, I don't know Civ without Bird Cult.

I'll make sure it's one of the first I add back.

 

[pokiehl]

The official 24 in-game buttons only use about 11 colors. Is that intentional? I was going to try and go as distinct as possible with all my buttons (which should help with the city bar situation), but should I be limiting my colors to a small set?

My two cents is that you should go for distinctness, if that's your preference. I don't see a reason to limit the colors to the existing ones.

(Same thing applies to the Leader jersey colors--the base game has a lot of repeating colors but modders still expanded out the system for more distinct combinations).

 

[SlightlyMad]

If it ends up being possible to give leader preferences, I would love it if the colors on the religion icons could be at least matched to the default jersey colors of the leaders that prefer them. I know this wouldn't be a perfect match since they wouldn't be 1:1, but it might at least help a little since currently in games I have absolutely no clue which religion is coming from which player at any given time (I know it's in the religions panel, but anything that requires extra clicks in the laggy UI adds so much pain).

 

[infiniterocks]

Does this include new beliefs too? Vanilla runs out of beliefs when you have more than 8 players

 

[Tomatekh]

Does this include new beliefs too? Vanilla runs out of beliefs when you have more than 8 players

Hi, the mod doesn't include any additional beliefs, sorry. Just like with the previous versions, I'm purposefully avoiding adding anything that might alter game play so that this mod is usable with as many other mods as possible. However, I'm sure someone else will make a new belief mod soon, especially given the 8 play limitation.

 

[Tomatekh]

For everyone else, sorry for not updating; I've been away the past week. However, I'm hoping to have a substantial update adding most, if not all, the religions sometime next week.

 

[moondog385]

So glad this is back! Thank you so much!

 

[CromulentRomulan]

Hi @Tomatekh thanks so much for the quick inclusion of this for Civ 7.

I was about to post a bug report but then wanted to double check on the off chance something within this mod might be causing it (I think its unlikely, but just double checking).

When using this mod I have noticed recently that when securing the option of a religious golden age legacy for the modern age that all religious presence in cities disappears at the start of the modern era. Or at least it is no longer visible.

Is there any possible interaction with this mod and that behaviour?

 

[Tomatekh]

Hi @Tomatekh thanks so much for the quick inclusion of this for Civ 7.

I was about to post a bug report but then wanted to double check on the off chance something within this mod might be causing it (I think its unlikely, but just double checking).

When using this mod I have noticed recently that when securing the option of a religious golden age legacy for the modern age that all religious presence in cities disappears at the start of the modern era. Or at least it is no longer visible.

Is there any possible interaction with this mod and that behaviour?

I'll have to double check. The version posted here was more proof-of-concept than finished mod, so it's possible I forgot to set something in the code as I'm still learning how Civ 7 modding works. I'm finishing up what I consider the actual release at the moment (which I wanted to post on Friday, but is now looking like I'll probably need maybe another week), so, I'll run some tests and sort out if that issue is on my end before it's released. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Tomatekh]

I'm finishing up what I consider the actual release at the moment (which I wanted to post on Friday, but is now looking like I'll probably need maybe another week).

So, as I just posted, it's going to be a little longer than I anticipated for the update. I think only a few more days to a week, but I'm definitely aiming to post it before the end of March. The excuse is simply that after 3 games, the mod has a huge number of religions. There's like 210 icons at this point. Everything - the research and templates and icons and color and text and code structure, etc. - is all done, but even then just taking all the finished parts and combining them to put a religion in the game takes a few minutes each x 210 icons and then making sure everything works in the configuration file. It's a lot of mindless busy-work at this point that adds up. Again, sorry for the delay.

 

[Tomatekh]

Okay, so I think I need to accept that I have to adjust my release schedule.

My plan to post the entire mod all at once in a timely manner is not going to happen. I vastly underestimated how long it actually takes to do all the busy work of adding an entry, let alone 210 of them, even with all the hard stuff already finished. Add to that if something comes up and I can’t mod for a day or two, or if I make a random typo and it takes me a half hour to figure out where in the code the issue is.

I know, it’s not really a problem taking longer, but I feel bad saying “next week” over and over. Plus, waiting is also delaying me from implementing any bug fixes. So, I think it’s actually best for me to implement the mod in pieces, largely in alphabetical order as I go down the list adding new icons.

What I’m going to do is organize what's ready, which is about 25% of the total religion icons, and post it tomorrow. Then next Monday post the next batch, and so-on. That way I can also slow down a bit and not burn out doing repetitive entries for hours every day. It should only take me 2-3 more updates to finish the whole thing.

Keep in mind, though, until the entire mod is added, stuff like the configuration file and other quality of life stuff I usually implement won’t fully work, because I need the entire mod to properly code everything. Some religions are also going to be out of order.

There’s also some issues that have come up that I can’t really fix on my own. First, how the icons look on the city bar. I said before that they were distorted compared to the base game. The game seems to blur the base game icons in a way that I can’t really replicate that also seems to help with the icon visibility. Now the actual base game icons aren’t blurred, and the visibility issue isn’t really fixed by how much I blur my own icons. I think it might actually be related to how icons are added to the game, which means it’s something I probably can’t fully fix until the official mod tools are released.

Secondly, with the number of religions, the mod would probably work better if the size of the Choose Religion screen is adjusted. I don’t really know how to edit the UI, so I’ll have to ask around for help with this. I’ll look into it after I finish adding all the icons.

Finally, I’m still unable to do anything about leader preferences.

Okay, so I'll post an update tomorrow with about 25% of the religion icons (and should fix two issues people have brought up about the religious golden age). Sorry for anyone hoping for the full mod. It's honestly my own fault for adding so many religions last game.

 

[Roamy]

Just wanted to chime in with appreciation for your work all these years, have been using your mod religiously (pun sorta intended?) since Civ5 days. <3

 

[Tomatekh]

1.0a

Okay, as promised, I've updated with the first batch of religions. It's a little over 25% of the icons. I'll have the next update in a week on Monday/Tuesday, which will probably take the icon total to about 60-66%.

Some of the religions are organized slightly differently or have new icons/names compared to VI. Actually, out of the 210 icons that will be in the final release, 70 are completely new, as besides new religions, I redid a lot more of the older religion icons than I initially planned. (I'm actually really pleased with all the new icons and most of them work a lot better with their religions).

Base religions also have different icons than their denominations this time around (because using them twice confused some people last time). If the denominations are active, than the base religion icon is added as a custom icon (which at the moment applies to Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam). You can turn this off in the configuration file, but the file is a bit of a mess at the moment.

I also had to re-do all the base game icons in order to change their colors. This update redoes all the base game religion icons; the base game custom icons will probably be in the next update.

So, this version includes the religions up to the start of the Christianity split, a scattering of ones after, and about 12 custom icons. 72 choices in-game, 60 from new/redone icons, and the 12 base game custom icons which are unchanged. Stuff like the "Lite Mode" option will be added at the end after all the religions are in.

As said, I'm aware of the issue with icon visibility on the city bar. Hopefully, the colors help out with that. (Speaking of the colors, they're mostly random. I started with a system, but quickly had to abandon it because of visibility limitations).

I believe the issue with the cultural golden age in the modern era is fixed, but please let me know if you encounter it again (or any other issues, especially with age transitions).

 

[Tomatekh]

Just wanted to chime in with appreciation for your work all these years, have been using your mod religiously (pun sorta intended?) since Civ5 days. <3

Thanks! I really appreciate hearing people still enjoy the mod. It's a lot more work than it seems, especially with how big it got after Civ 6, so it really means a lot!

 

[Eramas]

Thanks! I really appreciate hearing people still enjoy the mod. It's a lot more work than it seems, especially with how big it got after Civ 6, so it really means a lot!

I've been using your mods for 10 years, really happy to see you making mods for Civ VII, I appreciate all the effort.

 

[Tomatekh]

Tomatekh updated Historical Religions VII with a new update entry:

Icon update part 2

Continuing to add the icons; about 2/3 of them are now added. This update goes to the beginning of "M" as well as additional custom icons. This section contains a lot of the denominations (as it included Christianity, Hellenism, Hinduism, and Islam). Some of them are temporarily disabled in the configuration file as I'm going to organize them differently in the final release. Skipping making a preview image this week (since I'm just going to have to make another one in next week).

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Tomatekh]

Okay, sorry guys, this weeks update is going to be delayed a few days as I'm busy with stuff from work. I think I'll just aim to combine it with next weeks update, which should be the final update with all the icons and usable configuration file set up.