Philosophy Mod

[Che Guava]

Howdy folks,

I decided to put my plans for a guerilla warfare mod on hold to work on another one first that I may want to incorporate elements into. And here it is, the

Philosophical Movements Mod!

Boiled down, what I would like to do is add another religion-like model to the game that runs paralell to religions (i.e. doesn't exclude or affect them) based on philosophical movements, instead of religious ones. I think this might add a whole other dimension to the game, and also provide more emphasis on philosophy, regionalism, and the spread of ideas.

Here's an example from the list that I've made (bear with me):

Ethical Monotheism
Found tech: Monotheism
Spread tech: Priesthood
Obsolete by: Philosophy
Civic 1: Organized Religion
Civic 2: Hereditary Rule
Anticivic: Paganism
Effect 1: +1 happiness if city has state religion
Effect 2: +1 culture/city
Spread by: Temple, Monastary
Spread Rate: 100

This means that: the first person to found Monotheism founds Ethical Monotheims. This means that this new philosophy can spread to any connected cities (just like religion), or the cities of any civilization that has discovered Priesthood. This philosophy will remain in any city it spreads to until the civilization that owns it discovers Philosophy, at which point it disapears. While you do have it around though, switching to Organized Religion and Hereditary Rule will give you effects 1 and 2 (respectively) in any city that has this philosophy (until they are obsoleted, of course), while switching to the Paganism civic will cause 2 unhappiness in any city with that philosophy. Switching to OR/HR will also help increase the spread of this philosophy in your empire by 25% each, while the adoption of the anticivic will reduce the philosophy's spread by 25%. Once this philosophy is in a city, its spread rate is increased by the presence of a temple or monastary, and its normal spread rate without any help is 100.

Philosophies can be adopted by a city in 3 ways: by founding that philosophy, through the spread of the philosophy, or by a Great Philosopher (see below), who has the ability to add any philosophy to a city, provided that civ has the founding tech. You cannot stop the flow of philosophies, although the Civic 'police state' decreases the spread of all philosophies by 50%. THere's no limit to the amount of philosophies a city can have, although I'm trying to plan it out so that one city is unlikely to have more than 4...

Here's the list I have so far...

Shamanism
Human Sacrifice
Ethical Monothieism
Monarchism
Feudalism
Confucianism
Divine Right
Nationalism
Marxism
Capitalism
Liberalism
Fundementalism
Facism
Globalism
Environmentalism

The full list of philosophies with all thier relevent effects is in the word (*.doc) file below, along with plans for 2 units:

Great Philosopher: Can add philosophy to city
Inquisitor: Can remove a religion/philosophy/race from a city (with a big shout-out to Mylon and spincrus for 'inspiration'...

What I need:

*Help developing these ideas into a full mod
*Suggestions as to other mod components that would work well with this
*Any and all graphics that might be used for each philosophy
*HELP PUTTING IT TOGETHER! Seriously folks, I can't mod worth a dang, I just have lots of ideas and precious little time to learn python and xml!

If you think that you would be intersted in helping me in any of these roles, just write a post of PM me, and hopefully we can get this thing under way!

 

[IVZanIV]

I would be interested in XML programming.

 

[Che Guava]

I would be interested in XML programming.

Excellent! Any other takers?

 

[Holistic]

Seems like an interesting idea, but I'm not quite sure what you're after. Is it ideologies, political philosophies, ethics or just philosophies in general you're seeking to model? Many of the philosophies you're suggesting are not mutually exclusive in their "usual" meanings -- Capitalism and Liberalism in particular strikes as an odd "contrast" to make. Furthermore, they cover somewhat different areas of "philosophy". Your aim seems to be more compatible with what I'd call "ideologies" (and that's what most of the philosophies suggested are usually categorized as).

If it's indeed ideologies or political philosophies you're seeking to model, I'd suggest adding Conservatism. Also, Marxism could be renamed to Communism or Socialism, since both the ideology and the terms preceded Marx and are not as "specific" (then again, even Marx wasn't a Marxist). Social Democracy might warrant an idelogy-slot of its own, as might Anarchism.

As for philosophies, there's... very many missing, but few which can be called "movements" (which is another reason why I suspect it's "ideologies" you're going after). Whatever it is you're looking to model, I strongly suggest to keep the number of whatevers down (how about matching the number of religions?). Fewer whatevers also makes it slightly easier to find the artwork. Since "ideologies" would make an interesting late-game (post-Liberalism) counterpart to religions, what really strikes me as odd is that it hasn't been modded yet (but might just be my sub-par searching skills).

 

[Che Guava]

Seems like an interesting idea, but I'm not quite sure what you're after. Is it ideologies, political philosophies, ethics or just philosophies in general you're seeking to model? ....

THanks for the input. I don't have too much time right now, but I hope I can answer your questions:

-Ideologies is probably the better word to describe this mod (thanks ). WHat I wanted to do is represent the flow ow ideas from city to city to civilization, while at the same time finding a way to properly represent the 'people's will' when it comes to your choice of civics.

-As for names, I haven't worked them all out yet. Mostly I've been trying to distance them a little from the name of the techs and civics they are associated with...just for a little diversity...

-I should make it clear that cities can have multiple philosophies (indeed that is what I am aiming for) and some are more compatible than others. For eg, a city with liberalism and capitalism could get all the benefits from those ideologies if the leader choses the free religion, free market, and free speech civics. On the other hand, I city with both capitalism and marxism faces a problem: choose free market and piss off the socialists, or choose state property and lose out on the benefits of the capitalist spirit in that city. Make sense?

-more to come!

 

[Belizan]

Well, I'd agree with Holistic in so much as I'm not sure "philosophies" is exactly what you are modeling here. Personally, I'm not really sure I agree with your model either. Philosophies don't exactly become obsolete. The popular ones tend to become splintered and specialized. And people stop thinking about the unpopular ones.

But I didn't really intend to post with regards to my impressions of your intended effects. Rather, I really just wanted to say that there is a dizzying myriad of interesting things one can do with a parallel "religion" spread model that isn't wired into religions. And in that respect, I hope you are successful in getting this to work, because it will add an invaluable new tool for modders to add interesting effects to their mods.

 

[fenceman]

I think this is a great idea! It would make a huge impact on the game, if you were trying to run a democractic state, but all the people in your empire were marxist and facist, then you would be forced to become a more communistic state, or the other way around if you were trying to be communist and your people were liberal capitalists.
It is true that philosophies don't exactly go obsolete, but it does make sence because they can virtualy disapear over time. Maybe instead of totaly dissapearing when you get the technology that makes a philosophy obsolete it could simply stop growing, change to a negative growth rate so that it would eventaly dissapear, that way nations heavily influenced by a certain philosophy wouldn't change overnight.
I don't think there are too many philosophies, and i think having only 7 or 8 would be too few, because they go obsolete and dissapear, and because some of them compliment each other, offering a number of different civic choices. And if you were getting overwhelmed with philosophies you could always make a few inquisitors and remove the ones that you don't like.
Good luck to you, i really want to play with something like this!

 

[Che Guava]

Thanks for the input folks. I'll try my best to answer questions here:

The Name ok, ok ,ok! 'Philosophies' doesn't quite explain things as well as I thought it would. I think I'm leaning more towards calling this mod the "Ideologies Mod" instead, since that seems to describe it a bit better. FOr now, however, I'm sticking with philosophies....

'Obsoleting' Philosophies I think to explain my reasoning for wanting to add a shelf-life to each philosophy: Basically I didn't want to bog down gameplay by having each philosophy stay in the game until the very end (something which has always bothered me a bit about religions...). But how would you get in the new and take out the old? There were three main ways I was thinking about taking care of that:

1) obsolete philosophies at a certain point in the game via tech (like now)

2) obsolete philosophies in a city via the introduction of another philosophy (eg, a city with paganism will only have that philosophy until ethical monotheism spreads to it)

3) give each city a max of only 3 or 4 philosophies, with the introduction of the newest one replacing the oldest one (a city has 3 philosophies p1, p2, & p3. With the introduction of p4, the oldest philosophy, p1, is discarded.)

I thought that 1) would be the easiest to impliment, and would be less likely to create 'odd behaviours' in philosophies (human sacrifice making a comeback in the renaissance, for eg...). I hadn't thought about 'negative spread values', but that's an area worth taking a look at...

How will it WORK? This is the part where I explain how I see this happening in XML and where more knowledgeable modders correct me

What I would like to do is simply add 16 more religions to the game, then introduce a 'tag' system for each of them, akin to the UNITCLASS system in combat units. All 'religions' will follow the same basic rules, but with the philosophy tag, you won't be able to make that religion your 'state religion', they can still spread under the theocracy civic (but perhaps not under police state), they won't be associated with the usual temples/monastaries/etc, and I'm sure a dozen more little tweaks that I haven't thought of....

I think this would be a good approach, because it leaves the door open to more 'tags'. Maybe after philosophies, one could use another tag to model the spread of scientific ideas, national loyalties,diseases, or whatever!

anyhow, if anyone sees a hole in my logic (or thinks I'm biting off more than I can chew...) tell me now so I don't waste time on something that won't work...

thanks y'all!

 

[Red Door]

I like it, I'll help a little if there's anything you need.

 

[Che Guava]

thanks for the support! I'll let you know...

 

[spincrus]

Very good idea

Especially a city with the Marxist ideology revolting when the economy civic is switched to free markets would be a very nice touch!

Only problem I see, modding-wise, is how to implement such a completely different structure of "spreading concepts" (like religion) and how to add separate graphics for it on the gamefont.tga files (that file is known to be a *****)... Let alone a (perhaps) different advisor screen to display info on this matter.

 

[Che Guava]

Very good idea

Especially a city with the Marxist ideology revolting when the economy civic is switched to free markets would be a very nice touch!

Thanks guy!

re revolts: I was hoping to find a good city revolt mod (based on the ones in the old civ's!) that I could incorporate into it once I have it running. But who knows when that will be.

Only problem I see, modding-wise, is how to implement such a completely different structure of "spreading concepts" (like religion) and how to add separate graphics for it on the gamefont.tga files (that file is known to be a *****)... Let alone a (perhaps) different advisor screen to display info on this matter.

I know this could be a large task, that's why I'm looking for lots of help (hint hint ). What I think I would like to do is not treat ideologies/philosophies as seperate from religions, just a subcomponent that works on slightly different rules. I'm not too worried about graphics just yet (gotta chew and swallow before the next course...!), but I do admit that part will be a challenge.

If you would like to lend a hand at some point in the process, just toss me a PM and we'll see what we can do!

 

[Kidinnu]

Che,

Sent you a PM with response to your implementation questions. But here's a bigger one:

I have *never* seen religion automatically spread to cities that already have one. Every time my cities have had more than one religion it's because of a missionary (some AIs use them quite often). So you might have to implement your own diffusion code to allow philosophies to automatically spread into cities that already have others. That'll be fun, but will require a lot more python than any of the other ideas you'd discussed.

 

[Che Guava]

Ok folks: thanks to some excellent help from Kidinnu, I think I've parsed the core of the philosophies/ideologies model into a few distinct components. In the interest of keeping this process open, as well as pre-de-buggin any problems I might encounter, I'm posting the plans for these components.

If you have or have heard of any mods/components/code that might be useful to me, I would be delighted to hear from you . If you would like to flex your own xml/python muscles and help me out on these, I'd be twice as delighted to hear from you .If you see any major flaws in my plan, I won't be delighted, but I'd still like to hear about it.

Adding Philosophies
Description: Adding each new philosophy to the civ4religioninfo.xml and associated files, changing spread rates, etc
Progress:This should be a simple enough task. I'll be starting on it soon!

Adding Effects
Description: Add the effects on the particular philosophies. I think this might be done easier through the civ4civicinfos.xml, since the effects of each philosophy is tied to a civic.
Progress: right after I add the philosophies....

Discarding Founding Cities/State Religions
Description: Now it gets a little more complicated. Philosophies shouldn't have founding cities (or at least not the bonuses associated with them), and should not be able to be chosen as a state religion. For this we switch to python and modify the CvGameUtils.py to get rid of the founding city, but I still haven't been able to find a way to ensure that you cannot pick a philosophy as your state religion. Thanks again to kidinnu for help there.
Progress: Need help here!!!

Adding 'Missionary unit'
Description: Creating a new unit, "great philospher", that can found new philosophies or simply add ones to cities that have the proper techs, and ensure that normal missionaries can't spread philosophies.
Progress: if it comes down to it, I don't mind making missionaries spreaders of ideas and religions, but I would prefer having great philosophers. Kidinnu's True Prophets mod will be useful here (thanks again bud..)

Obsoleting Philosophies
Description: Getting philosophies to remove themselves from cities once a certain tech is discovered.
Progress: Again, I might have to concede this one to the Python gods if things get real hairy, but I have been assured it is possible through the Python/CvEventManager.py, in the onTechAcquired() function. I think Mylon's Inquisitor mod might be a good inspiration here....

Diffusing Philosophies
Description: As mentioned in the previous post, religions don't seem to spread well to cities that already have them. This is a must as the whole concept falls appart if the philosophies can't interact with each other...
Progress: Hooooo boy.....anybody up for a programming challnge?

Graphics, civilopedia, screen arrangements
Description: all that nice stuff to make it look pretty
Progress: I can't even see that far ahead right now

Well, that's the list (although I'm sure I forgot something.....). If you can help with hints, criticisms, or anything, don't hold back. If you're interested in helping mod it, please send me a PM!

 

[Hugin]

Now perhaps this is just a wacky, hair-brained idea, but for preventing players from selection a philosophy as a state religion would it be possible to use python to modify the Religious advisor screen so that they just "fall off" the edge? That is, seemingly every time someone adds a new religion they find that it is only half on the screen, as the screen doesn't have the room. Instead of making room, just push it out. If a player can't see it they can't select it (right?).

~Hugin

 

[Che Guava]

Good idea! I'm a little more worried about the all-seeing AI chossing them, though...

 

[IVZanIV]

Also, I don't think that you could guarentee that all users couldn't see them with different resolutions.

 

[Che Guava]

I think that would only be a temporary solution anyhow; at some point I'm going to need a way to easily separate religions from philosophies for the AI and users. My coding research continues...

 

[fenceman]

*bump*
This is a good idea

 

[Thasis]

I'm working something into a mod I'm creating right now that is practically the same thing. When (or if) I get to the point where I've set the system up I'll give you what I have and you can use what you see fit, and/or modify it.