Religion mod for ancient cultures needed badly

[NickSD]

I'm a disabled guy typing with trackball mouse and an onscreen keyboard, so forgive me if this is brief or if it takes a long time for me to reply.

The Incas and Aztecs were VERY religious, cultures perhaps more centered on their religion than any other civilizations. Their entire society revolved around their gods and rituals. The New World scenario in Civilization III: Conquests represented this excellently, allowing you to sacrifice people, build the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon, farm the side of mountains, and research body modification, mummification and the Blood Cult government. I loved playing as the Incas and getting a single-city cultural victory.

That Incas and Aztecs can't practice the religions so central to their civilizations in Civilization IV makes me CRINGE. Seeing my beloved Incas willingly practicing Judaism, Buddism and Christianity makes my soul hurt.

Can someone make a mod that replaces the word "Confucianism" (Confucianism is not considered a religion by most people) with "Native Polytheism" or "Paganism" or "Animism" something? That would allow the Incas, Aztecs, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to have their religions.

Could someone also point me to a downloadable map of the Americas with culturally-linked start locations?

And one day I'd love to see a full blown mod along the lines of the the New World scenario in Civilization III: Conquests. I'd mod myself but am too dumb / busy.

Thanks, and I look forward to your comments / ideas!

Nick

 

[Coopa]

I think it is very good idea, but it would need to be adapted to make it seem that there is a difference in the religion, you will get other Civ's with the native religion liking you because technically you have the same religion, and it should be available to all Civs from the start (or special Civs, giving variety and realism)

 

[NickSD]

Anyone interested in making this?

 

[Martinus]

It should be easy to do if you just want to change names and/or symbols - someone with a dds editor should be able to do it.

However, adding the modifiers, like allowing for sacrifices etc., can be difficult, I think.

 

[NickSD]

Yeah. I'd love just a basic way to play Incas with their proper religion. I can't bear to play them otherwise.

 

[Coopa]

I think there is just patience needed. I'm sure as Mod's come out, and Civ's get more diverse, there will be more and more advancements in what religion can be used to do. I guess there are hundreds of modders who are just playing around at the moment with the game and will turn to modding soon.

I'm sure someone could change the name of the religion quite easily along with the picture (but as it would be a generic picture, there is no real picture for it) but advancing beyond that may take time

 

[wotan321]

Mithraism needs to be in there.....

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Well, the other thing to remember is that even with the Inca religion in the game or not, it doesn't mean you'll be playing them with their "proper" religion... I mean, you basically get what you get and its not necessarily the religion that the people had historically...

Which I like and yet I don't like at the same time... as a player, I like it. As a modder, I don't... basically because I want to create a game where every civilization plays differently... and with Civ3, I gave each civ a religion (basically a technology or series of technologies to simulate religion) and it was easy because what they got from the religion was historically accurate... but now... I have to think of whether its really a civ-specific thing or a religion-specific thing...

Case in point... a Madressa improvement... originally, the Arabs and the Malinese could build this improvement in Civ3 because they both shared the Muslim technologies... but now, do I make the Madressa a Muslim building or an Arab building? Do I want the Muslim French or English building a Madressa? Do I want the Buddhist Arabs building a Madressa? So many new things to think about...

 

[dh_epic]

A neat idea would be allowing a national-level religion in a civilization. The advantage to a national religion is it would be more easily accessible. The disadvantage is it could never become international, cause diplomatic penalties, and maybe not have as many benefits as the other religions. (Money, happiness, etc -- only something that allows you to access civics.)

It could be available with priesthood, but has less effects than the international major religions.

OR

Tie it to the spiritual trait, to make it slightly better. It would be interesting that spiritual leaders could muster up support around a unique religion or sect.

 

[wooga]

I would like to see many more religions, but with an option during game setup to disable individual religions. Always having 7 religions, regardless if its a 2 or 18 civ game, makes no sense.

Personally, I'd like some later game religions. For example, I think that "Protestantism" should appear with the discovery of the printing press. Plus, lumping together all Christian sects prevents any game from roughly tracking history (just based on sheer numbers of adherents).

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I would like to see many more religions, but with an option during game setup to disable individual religions. Always having 7 religions, regardless if its a 2 or 18 civ game, makes no sense.

Personally, I'd like some later game religions. For example, I think that "Protestantism" should appear with the discovery of the printing press. Plus, lumping together all Christian sects prevents any game from roughly tracking history (just based on sheer numbers of adherents).

Protestantism.. similarly to Sunni or Shiite Islam are rather tricky as they are branch offs of the base faith... It wouldn't make sense for it to be introduced as its own religion, but I also don't know how one would program it to be split from the original faith.

 

[NickSD]

Protestantism.. similarly to Sunni or Shiite Islam are rather tricky as they are branch offs of the base faith... It wouldn't make sense for it to be introduced as its own religion, but I also don't know how one would program it to be split from the original faith.

You don't need to program it "splitting off." Just have Protestantism emerge like any other faith.

Buddhism emerged from Hindu society, Christianity spun off from Judaism, and we don't to program it to be split from the original faith. It is just founded, and the split can be inferred.

Nick

 

[dh_epic]

I think that a "reformation" civic would be more interesting to the game than a new religion.

e.g.: Reformation lets you keep your own money instead of giving it to the religion's founder, and maybe suffer a diplomatic penalty with the founder because of it.

 

[maxpublic]

Nation-specific religions are already in the game. It's called "culture".

The trick here is to allow a nation to spread its particular religion as is already done with the faiths that come in the game. Of course, you could just say that by spreading your culture and taking over the cities of other nations you're doing exactly that, in which case religion as a separate concept becomes extraneous. And where a singular religion is universal (e.g., Catholicism in Medieval Europe) it becomes irrelevent in terms of actually gameplay, since who the hell are you going to convert?

The easiest thing game-wise is just to remove religion entirely. After all, Christianity was spread to the Third World almost exclusively by force by European nations in the Age of Imperialism, and Islam has an almost equally bloody history that extends all the way to Polynesia. Even Buddhists got down and dirty in certain parts of Asia. The truly non-evangelical religions (e.g., Hinduism, Taoism) are exclusive to certain cultures, aside from a few modern Westerners who've latched on to 'faith's' like Taoism as an alternative to Christianity.

I'm still not sure what the point is of 'religion' as a separate concept in the game. It doesn't seem to be of much real value, other than providing people with a free set of bonuses when they manage to win the race to religion X and build the associated buildings. Folding religion into culture does the job of making sure each nation retains its own faith, as well as removing those gimme bonus buildings. If you want to 'convert' people peacefully, well, then pursue a culture victory; if you want to win like the Christians did during the Age of Imperialism, then conquer them. Really doesn't matter what religion you practice in either case, all that matters is that one way or another it's going to be YOURS.

Max

 

[dh_epic]

I tend to agree that religion offers limited value, and that culture would have been a better thing to improve on.

But the dynamics of spreading religion are kind of neat, and religion has the value of generating gold if you found it. This also has implications for the tech tree, since there's now another strategy to pursue, and it makes choices between branches a bit better.

Religion wasn't a total bust. But I agree, there are dozens of improvements I would have rather seen first.