Just Another Religion Mod (BtS / Modular)

[JustATourist]

In another forum thread we were collecting ideas for building graphics for a shamanism religion. I think it's better to continue the discussion here instead of hijacking other people's threads.

My ideas for buildings so far are:

For the shamanism temple and monastry I thought about stealing buildings from the Colonization city sets and adding some colorful poles. I think I can do this myself. But I don't want to use native american totems, because some western asian tribes did also have shamanis. I want those buildings to be neutral enough to fitt for them, too. Genghis Khan or Ekmeks Attila could be candidates for shamanism.

But I don't have any idea yet for the cathedral and shrine, that's my biggest problem at the moment. So any suggestion, link, picture would help very much. Something like a earth mount or a heap of stones could be an idea. But the building must fit into a city, so for example if it is on a green valley or something like this, it could look very strange in later eras.

Ekmek answered:

for cathedrals, May be a long house with a wall around it and four poles (not totem). Or do it like a garden?

for shrines - I was thinking of making a monument of a guy on horseback but make the color look like stone. Or reuse the mountain graphic and just call it sacred mountain.

The cathedral might be an idea. It's a quite solid idea but yet I am not sure, if there isn't a better possibility.

Another idea might be something like a arena: A big festival place in the middle, where the shaman and his assistents do perform their rituals (you know, dancing around the fire and so on) and a circle around this where the people can watch and celebrate. You know, what I mean? But I fear, it is too difficult as a first selfmade building for me.

The shrine is another thing. A hero on a horseback statue is a more western idea, I don't feel, this is specific for shamanism. I prefer the holy mountain idea, that more typical, but a holy mountain right in the center of a industrial or modern town? I don't know. But I don't have a better idea yet.

Another idea I had was a burial place as cathedral or shrine. As far as I know, burial places are most sacred places in shamanism, but I don't really know much about shamanism, to tell the truth. But I don't know, if this is a usefull idea, or what kind of grafics to use (graves on the top of wooden poles, a building or a pile of stone like GeoModder suggested).

 

[Ekmek]

The mountain in a middle of an industrial town might actually look cool.

grave yard sounds cool. IIRC they did it in a circular pattern so maybe reqorking stonehenge would do something. or a series of mounds in a circular patter would do.

the other option is setting up a camp fire in the center and have a bunch of tents. but then you might have to do teepees and yurts to cover both types of shamans

 

[GeoModder]

Graves on top of poles was mostly a native (north)american practice as far as I know. JustATourist, do you own the Colonization game? There's graphic stuff inthere that might come useful for you.

 

[JustATourist]

Graves on top of poles was mostly a native (north)american practice as far as I know. JustATourist, do you own the Colonization game? There's graphic stuff inthere that might come useful for you.

I do and I allready had a look at it, but there isn't much which I find useful. The buildings are european style only. The only native buildings are in the city sets, but these buildings are either south american style or quite plain. Probably I will use two of the plain buildings, moddify them and use them as temple and monastery. But I haven't found more usefull building.

 

[GeoModder]

Well, you could ask an artist to cut the pieces apart from the native cityset(s). For instance the pottery, hide -and cloth window, the burial sticks and the tentpoles from the plains cityset. With all those together you could create something more unique in nifskope.

 

[turingmachine]

tsentom1 did a good Tengriism in his Thomas' War mod (with a unique movie, buildings, missionary, sounds, etc). I know he had gotten shinto, etc from your mod (he credited you) so I figured he got that as well (the sound he used he credited from the rapture mod).

Tengriism is a kinda shamanism. He used tents for two of the 'temples' an animated fire graphic for another one and a mountain for the shrine.

 

[JustATourist]

Thanks for the suggestion turingmachine, but it's a little bit too late now. However I could have a look at the missionary.

 

[Fedrigh Beli]

Hi!

I have a question.
Etnic Religions like Norse, Greek etc. are realistic and founded by their historical civs or you may have Vikings with Mesoamerican Religion and such not-realistic things?

Thank you and sorry for my bad english.

Fedrigh.

 

[GeoModder]

You can choose to have for instance the Norse religion for the Greek civilization, if that is your question. But the leaders religious preference has been set for them, so if Ragnar manages to research a religious tech first, and Norse Mythology is still free, he will take that religion.

 

[JustATourist]

Wellcome to the forums, Fedrigh, and I am honored to recieve your very first post.

For your question: GeoModder allready answered in short: It is not possible in BtS to garantee, that every civilization will have a realistic religion. For example if you play as england and found christianity a AI-controlled France won't be able to found it again. Every leader has a tag in the xml-files which says, which religion he or she does prefer, for example most european leaders christianity, Saladin Islam and in JARM Ragnar the norse and Pericles the greek religion. If the leader does found a religion, he/she will found his/her prefered religion, if it isn't found by anyone before. If anyone else allready found the prefered religion, the AI will found a random religion. As a player you can freely choose what religion you like to found.

This is how the vanilla game mechanics work and we haven't changed any of them.

 

[Solomon116]

Is there any way that I could change the names of the religions in JARM and BtS on my computer?
If so how?

Thanks!

 

[GeoModder]

Is there any way that I could change the names of the religions in JARM and BtS on my computer?
If so how?

I suppose in the ChooseReligions_CIV4GameText file...

 

[JustATourist]

Wow Geo, you are faster than me every time. Do you ever sleep?

 

[Solomon116]

Thanks!

You can choose to have for instance the Norse religion for the Greek civilization, if that is your question. But the leaders religious preference has been set for them, so if Ragnar manages to research a religious tech first, and Norse Mythology is still free, he will take that religion.

and is there any way to turn off AI leaders having religion preferences?
(because they bias heavily towards Christianity)

 

[Refar]

No, they not bias towards Christianity, they bias towards a religion that is the most appropriate for that leader (out of the existing ones). So Christian Leaders will take Christianity, while - for example - Hindu folks will take Hinduism - if that religion is not taken by someone else yet (in which case they fall back to random which is "no preference").

This is so, because it's defined for each Leader in Civ4LeaderheadInfos.XML as <FavouriteReligion> - which is also your answer to how to turn it off.

 

[Solomon116]

Ok thanks for telling me
final random point- are there any jewish leaders?

 

[GeoModder]

Wow Geo, you are faster than me every time. Do you ever sleep?

Probably more then you do.
(just a case of better timezone, that's all. )

 

[JustATourist]

Ok thanks for telling me
final random point- are there any jewish leaders?

No, not in vanilla BtS. However there are different Leaderheads you can download in the Forums, which would make jewish leaders.

If you want to turn of that the AI do favor specific religions, you have to replace the line "<FavoriteReligion>RELIGION_OLYMP</FavoriteReligion>" (or whatever) with "<FavoriteReligion>NONE</FavoriteReligion>" for every Leader in CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.xml.

 

[Onionsoilder]

I was playing JARM in modular setup with another mod(great mod, btw), when I founded the Olympic Panthenon. I switched my state religion over, but to my surprise there was the Cereal Mills HQ symbol next to my name instead of the Holycity symbol like all the vanilla religions. I tested this with others and got different corps, like Asen had the Aluminum Corp symbol. Is this supposed to happen? Is there any way to make the actual religion symbol appear next the the diplo screen names instead of these corporation sysmbols?

 

[Refar]

You have a screwed\missing Gamefont.tga\Gamefont_75.tga.
These are not module-friendly and hence part of the non-modular component of the mod, in the Res/Fonts/ folder. Either for some reason you dind not install properly, loosing or misplacing the file\s or the other mod overwritten them.