Religion Mod Challenge

[Donegeal]

I was an "Official Registarant" of Apolycon '06 (Hi there Nolon! Hi Chieftess (you enjoying your copy of Rise of Legends?)! Hi Daviddjesd!) where I got to meet Sid and Soren. When Soren was talking about the development of Civ4, he said that Religion was originally made to have 5 different levels of strength in each city it was present in. It was dropped to 3 levels and then again changed to what we have today (present or not present). My challenge to any modder that a) has the time, b) has the skill and c) thinks this is a good idea, is to re-implement this concept, but see if there is a way to do so so that religion is actually assigned to individual population points. I am not capable of doing such programing, so I came here to see if I could find someone who could (or even if enybody thought the idea has merit).

What do you think? Is it even possible? Is there anyone out there willing to give this a try?

 

[AltarisGreyhawk]

Actually, I think that's somewhat doable. I've been working on a mod that has different influence levels in a city based on how long the religions been founded in the city. There's python functions to get and set religion influence values on a city object, though tying them to population might be tough.

What I've been doing is having a city gain a certain # of points in religion influence every turn after it acquires the religion. I'm using the Spread Factor for religions to determine the amount (e.g. I've set Buddhism to have a SF of 60, so a city gains 6 points of Buddhism Influence per turn it has Buddhism; Islam has a SF of 120, so cities gain 12 points of Islam Influence per turn it has Islam, etc). My system works so that if a city has a certain state religion, but a different religion with higher influence, it runs the risk of having religious revolution, where one of the conflicting religions is run out of the city. So, older, lower Spread Factor religions can, over time, be overtaken by the newer, higher Spread Factor religions.

It works pretty well, and causes a lot more variety in the civ religions. It doesn't work off of population at all, but I think it accomplishes the same goal you are looking for. I haven't released the mod yet, but if you're interested, just let me know and I'll keep you posted on how it comes along. I've got it working with Warlords as well, so both the expansion and vanilla can be used with it.

 

[Donegeal]

That does sound very good and I would be interested in how it goes, but its not everything I was looking for.

I was seeing a religion spread in a city like it spreads to other cities. Over time, you'll end up with a pop 12 city that has Hinduism with 6 of that pop being Hindu. It also has Judeaism and has 3 pop Jew. That leaves only 3 pop to the other 5 religions, so it limits the number of religions that can be in a city. No size 3 city with all 7 religions. I'd also like to see that a temple can only make 1 pop of that religion happy, and a cathedral/Mosque/whatever can only make 2 additional people happy if there is the corresponding 2 additional pop are of that religion.

This kinda runs in the the Inquisition idea I had when Civ4 first came out (and has been done somewhere on these forums). An Iqusitor comes in and wouldn't purge the entire 'heathen' religion, but only a single pop of it. If our size 12 city mentioned above had the 6 pops of Hindus, it would take 6 Inqusitors to remove the religion (and subsequent improvements).

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hey Donegeal,

Did Soren reveal to you if he, or any of the other members of the development team, are planning on revisiting religion in future patches or expansions? You know, perhaps to shake things up a bit and create a little more conflict between different religions and between the same religion-but holding different values (i.e. different religious civics). I REALLY hope that they plan to build on the religion concept, because it is a great concept, just a little simplistic!

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Donegeal]

No, he didn't. He did, however, say something about how they didn't want to do stuff like that becuase, well, even just the small convention group started to get into heated discussions. Now imagine if a company went ahead and started saying things like religion x researches better than religion y. No, for Firaxis, they have to make all the religions generic and equal. He did say that he enjoyed all the stuff thats been made out there that wasn't so PC.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

You know though, Donegeal, that is not how I ever thought they should go about defining religion. None of the conflict and differentiation surrounding religion should occur from elements hardcoded into each religion, but in the way the player (or AI) chooses to express that faith. Now this is already touched on with Religious Civics. All I am really suggesting they look at is:

(a) expand-and more greatly differentiate-the religious civics. Particularly giving certain Civics the ability to cause problems for multi-faith cities.
(b) have differences in Religious civics play a greater role in Diplomacy-to better represent sectarian differences (like Europe's Wars of Religion after the Reformation).
(c) Revamp the Anarchy system to potentially incorporate Trip's Rebellion Mod (or one of its successors) to better represent how political and religious change can lead to social upheaval.

None of these are particularly difficult from a technical standpoint, and I don't really see how they can cause any offense (as they tie in to player actions, NOT preconcieved notions of each religion). Given that they have not shied away from such things as ethnic cleansing and slavery, I find it odd that Firaxis should be so timid about implementing a minor gameplay tweak which will-in spite of its size-massively improve the overall game.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

here is a case in point:

Lets say you have the religion Confuscianism. Now, on its own it doesn't do anything different from any other religion. However, lets say the player that founded Confuscianism in this game adopts a more Militant form of the religion (Theocracy). Now this will give units in State Religion cities +2XP, but it should do more-it should give a -1 happiness per non-state religion (after all, militant faith does tend to preclude other faiths), and perhaps a Building and/or Unit specific to either the Theocracy civic OR to Militant Confuscianism (if ones ever existed, historically).
Now, to take my example further. Lets say another Confuscian State decides to take a Pacifist approach to the religion? This gives all the usual benefits of the Pacifism civic, but should spark diplomatic hostility with the faith's Founder (especially as Militancy and Pacifism are Polar Opposites)-at least initially. In addition, such a major change in the way Confuscianism is practiced should have the chance (and I stress CHANCE) to spark internal upheaval-beyond the mere 1-turn of anarchy civics changes currently produce.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[AltarisGreyhawk]

One thing to keep in mind in requesting a change like this is whether it will be a GOOD change or not. When I'm working on any mod, I look to see whether the AI will be able to cope with the change. If not, I don't usually bother, as the change usually won't have any effect except for possibly making the game harder or easier, not better.

While some of these changes may be possible, it is highly unlikely that the AI will be able to effectively manage a mod of this scope. I went with the approach I did because it tends to make a civ only change religions once or twice throughout a game. However, if cities are constantly changing religions, the AI is going to always choose the most dominant religion in the civ (and by that, the religion in the most number of cities).

Just something to keep in mind. In general, mods work far better with only a few minor changes done at the surface level, so the AI does not have to do anything new or different to accomplish the mod's goal.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

You see though, this is why I actually veer away from talk of altering the religions themselves. I find that most of the religions-at their core-would be almost impossible to describe in terms of 'Specialists Allowed', 'Bonus Research' and other gameplay mechanics. Civics, however, represent the more 'sectarian' elements of religion and-hence-can be better defined. Pacifist, Militant, Orthodox, Evangalistic, Ascetic, Reformist, Fundamentalist, Free, Sacrificial and Organized are all things which can be broken down into gameplay terms-and thus give us the greatest power for differentiating religions w/o pigeonholing a specific Faith. After all, isn't that what 'what if?' games are all about? What IF Bhuddism had adopted a Militant approach-would that have changed relations between the various Bhuddist nations, or Bhuddism's spread through the world? What IF Judaism had been Evangelical, and actively sought new members for inclusion into the faith? These are the possibilities we can play out WITH a more expansive set of Religious Civics. If we also add new effects to each one, then it allows for even greater flexibility, IMO.
Back to the Original Post, though. I do wish they had retained the 'Strength' factor to religion. After all, my Christian Holy city is gonna have a very different attitude towards Christianity than it is towards that Bhuddist faith which only made an appearance 1500 years later.
What could happen is that a religion has 4 strength 'levels'-with only the Holy City of a Faith able to achieve 4. All cities which get a religion (including the Holy City), get Strength 1-which grants you the simple +1 Happiness and Culture Bonus (or +5 Culture in the Holy City). At Strength 2, you can build a Temple and Monastary in the city, and the culture bonus increases by +1. At Strength 3, you get either a bonus +1 Happiness or a +1 Culture AND you can build a Cathedral-type improvement in the city. Religious strength may also impact whether you can build certain Wonders in the city.
Now, strength would increase over time (based on the length of the game, whether it is your State Religion, and how late the religion appears in the game), but building a Shrine would automatically boost Strength by +1, as would adopting it as a (hence the Str. 4) The down side might be this. The stronger a religion is within a city, the longer it takes to build improvements of 'weaker' faiths. So, for example, a Strength 2 Christian city may take 25% longer to build temples and monastaries of the Strength 1 Bhuddist faith. This might help to stop people from 'Spamming' religions (though having civics with negative happiness from non-state religions would have the same effect IMO). Anyway, it may be worth a modder with SDK abilities looking into this. I know I would certainly play games incorporating such a mod!

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[dh_epic]

Rather than doing 5 different levels of strength per religion, let alone a different religion for every unit of population... Here's a simple implementation idea.

• Every city has 5 religious "slots".
• Initially, none of the slots are filled.
• A religion can fill more than one slot. (e.g.: 3/5 Muslim, 2/5 Jewish).
• Religions not only gradually spread between cities, but within cities. (e.g.: 2/5 were Muslim, now 3/5 are Muslim)
• Sometimes, religions can "overwrite" each other. (e.g.: was 4/5 Muslim, 1/5 Jewish... now 3/5 Muslim, 2/5 Jewish.)
• Each "slot" represents a quintile (20%) of the population.

You'd also need to revamp the benefits from religion -- from the Holy City's wealth generation, to the happiness and culture per city.