Religion symbol priority?

[AlphaKappa]

I noticed that Spain and Poland prefer Catholicism but if that's not available, then they always adopt the symbol of an eastern religion. I never see any European AI Civs adopt Judaism or Protestantism as a secondary option.

Is there some way to control the priority of religions that AIs prefer?

I really want to see Judaism and Eastern Orthodoxy in my Europe games.

 

[dylansan]

I'm not sure how VP handles it, but I'm pretty sure in the base game, Civs have a preferred religion, but if they don't get it they pick whatever's available. I don't know if it's random or just the first available option or what, but I'm pretty sure only one preference is defined per Civ.

I suspect that VP/CPP hasn't changed anything in that respect. If you'd just like more variety, it may be possible to modify the code that chooses a religion to pick more randomly if the preferred choice is unavailable (depending on how it's coded now). Giving Civs 2nd or 3rd choices would require more involved logic, I'd imagine. But there may be a separate mod somewhere that does what you're asking or something similar.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can shed some light.

 

[CrazyG]

I think that if a civ doesn't have its preferred religion, it takes the next one alphabetically. So a historically catholic nation will found Buddhism extremely often as a result. I don't think anyone prefers Judaism, so a game would need an enormous amount of religions for an AI to found it.

 

[Maximo the Xth]

They choose alphabetically, but they do skip Religions that are preferred by other civs in the game. So if you have for example Siam, Spain and Poland in the game, Poland founds first and Spain second, it will not take Buddhism, but Confucianism (unless Korea is in the game, too, then Hinduism etc.)
You could use whoward's "Randomise Religions" (-->) to avoid that. By default it randomizes all religion picks but with one small xml change Civs will still choose their preferred religion first and randomly after it is taken. Works well with VP.