Proposal: Realistic religions mod. COMMENTS NEEDED.

[Dom Pedro II]

No need to be so harsh If I misconveyed my intent, I apologize.

Sorry, it wasn't directed at you specifically. I should've said I was speaking to people in general after I had commented on your post

And I do think your choice of attributes for said religions is quite reasonable.

 

[wooga]

The Zoroastrian graphic should definitely be a flame of some sort (or Freddie Mercury!). As far as bonus/penalties, I'd suggest a health penalty for each city with a zorastrian temple because of their open burial practices (leaving bodies on high mounds to be eaten by birds). It's also another candidate for "no missionary" unit.

I'm at a loss for bonus suggestions. For balance, a science or culture boost could work.

 

[Balastulin]

I think the religion = system of belief mod would be interesting, but the one I'm making uses proper nouns (ie names of real religions). I've heavily edited the original post in this thread to show everyone where I am. I need advice on Taoism and Zoroastrianism as well as some problems I'm having implementing Islamic banking. I also need to figure out graphics for Zoroastrianism.

Don't know if this has been mentioned/incorporated yet, but Hinduism is a non-proselitysing religion - one is born into it; one cannot convert to it. Therefore some kind of missionary defecit might be in order?

 

[spu00trb]

If we are going to bring in religions without missionaries then even under the current system of belief they will be at an enormous disadvantage since they will spread so slowly. You will be unable to use missionaries to keep your allies sweet and to try and calm your potential enemies by converting them to your relgion. Any religion with no missionaries should get big bonuses, since it is going to be very hard to spread that religion even to your own cities and itsnt going to make you any friends diplomaticaly, and since it is going to be so unpopular its holy city is going to be nearly useless in terms of money making.

 

[abbamouse]

I just played a game where Judaism became dominant in my area of the world, despite not having any missionaries. A faster spread rate is really quite a significant boost. However, the porblem with the playtest game was that while Judaism spread just fine, it was all conglomerated in one place (i.e. a big blob o' religion). This could have happened historically -- but it didn't. I'd love to have a way of simulating the diaspora. Ironically, when it comes to game mechanics Christianity (cheap missionaries but little natural spread) looks more like a diaspora faith, with a small core and many outposts around the world, than does Judaism (no missionaries but a compensating higher rate of natural spread).

Any ideas on this? I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, and I'm not sure how to fix it if it is

Oh, and as for Zoroastrianism I'm using the graphics from the Greek World mod included with the game. D'oh! Didn't notice those were there before... I'm having trouble eliminating all references to Confucianism, though, and some items like the regular Confucian temple still have the Confucian logo, not the Zoroastrian one...

Any ideas for advantages and disadvantages for Taoism or Zoroastrianism?

One final note: I don't know how to enable a player to remove a faith from an area. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not, but since I don't know how to implement it yet I won't be implementing it yet

 

[Fantomas]

While I agree that, as it stands, Civ4's religions are too a-historical, I think that a system of disadvantages and advantages that are tied a religion don’t add any historical realism to the game. I think they in fact detract from it. To give absolute qualities to a religion ignores the historical context in which it was founded and developed. For a civ in a starting religion with no wine and only pork as far as the eye can see to develop a religion which gives bonuses for a resource that is unknown and detracts from the only known food does not make sense for a developmental view. To illustrate my point let me point, in Judaism, there are exceptions to kosher law for people who are in dire circumstances (ie starvation). Similar tenets exist in Islam. Would it make sense then for a Jewish or Islamic civ to receive negative health bonuses for pork if it was the only food available? Moreover, would it make sense for them to even develop kosher laws without access to alternative food choices? To say that it does completely dehistoricises a religion and makes it a static and absolute thing.

I really like the idea of the generalised seven religions as a solution but I think there are some key problems with it. You would have to abandon a religion you’ve founded for another to receive certain benefits or special units, losing a kind of religious continuity plus your line of sight bonuses. Moreover, from a historical standpoint this system does not account for change within a religion. Many religions are living bodies that reform and shed some rules while adding others. They react to human developments. One only needs to look to Vatican II to see a striking example of this. I would hazard that there is no religion (as a whole with all sects accounted for) today that is practised exactly as it was at its founding.

To counteract this I suggest that rather than have seven generalised religion to replace the existing ones we add an entirely new civic line called “religion,” and that the seven general terms become civics, with everything from animism to monotheistic fanaticism. With this I think religions, themselves should operate in much the same way that they do in the unmodded game, as blank slates. Their historical depth given to them would come from the development of their religious civics. There could, under this system, be many outlooks within one religion resolving a lot of the tensions we’ve been seeing on the board. These different outlooks might be thought of as sects, so that a more hardline approach might produce fundamentalist Christianity whereas a softer line might produce humanist Christianity. You could even impose heavy negative diplomatic points between civs who are the same religion but different sects of it allowing for things like the War of Reformation, etc.

That’s just one suggestion but whatever the final outcome of this discussion is in mod form I think that they key to historical realism is not some kind of static sets of attributes but a flexible system that is changeable over the course of a civs history.

 

[ostar]

Zoroastrianism was a prosetlyzing (sp?) religion. The Sassinid Persians aggressively promoted it, and there were Zor. temples in China as late as the 1100s. So they should have missionaries, certainly.

 

[MRM]

I just played a game where Judaism became dominant in my area of the world, despite not having any missionaries. A faster spread rate is really quite a significant boost. However, the porblem with the playtest game was that while Judaism spread just fine, it was ll conglomerated in one place (ie a big blob o' religion). This could have happened historically -- but it didn't. I'd love to have a way of simulating the diaspora. Ironically, when it comes to game mechanics Christianity (cheap missionaries but little natural spread) looks more like a diaspora faith, with a small core and many outposts around the world, than does Judaism (no missionaries but a compensating higher rate of natural spread).

Any ideas on this? I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, and I'm not sure how to fix it if it is

Well you can change the spread factor in the file CIV4ReligionInfo.xml you will find it under

C:\...Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\XML\GameInfo

Oh, and as for Zoroastrianism I'm using the graphics from the Greek World mod included with the game. D'oh! Didn't notice those were there before... I'm having trouble eliminating all references to Confucianism, though, and some items like the regular Confucian temple still have the Confucian logo, not the Zoroastrian one...

I guess you have to edit the skins of the temples too - seems to be a lot of work to change a religion ( if you don't want only to change the names )

btw have you any idea how to make a small movie ? I guess i make a mod to add norse religion - but no idea how to make a movie

One final note: I don't know how to enable a player to remove a faith from an area. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not, but since I don't know how to implement it yet I won't be implementing it yet

No idea too, so far. But we need such an function if we add penalties for having more than one religion in a city/civ. In this case the player should have the possibility to remove/convert the infidels