Religions: Unfun Restrictions

[Korias]

This mod is by far one of the most sophisticated out there, even at such an early stage. However, the one thing that is infuriating is Religion.

While you (the mod team) are keeping it to the source material in what religions a civ can and cannot adopt, its taking away from a core facet of Civ 4- and that was the idea of being able to convert allies to your religion. Not only is this alot harder to do because of religious restrictions, its annoying when playing on maps that have unified bands of same religion Civs (Such as, say, The Brets, The Kislev, and the Empire boxing you in and all have Salvation state religion, while you're stuck with Elven Gods)

The solution, as far as I can tell, is to add an option into the custom-game menu that lets you disable religious restrictions. That way, it brings the mod a small bit of balance in that if this option WAS selected, religions would work as they normally do and therefore could be a much bigger factor in large maps, where having the same religion as your allies close by can stave off war.

Exampls: You're playing Empire, surrounded by Beastmen, Goblins, Bretonia, Orcs and Lizardmen. Bretonia is the ONLY one you can convert if you manage to found Salvation, and if Kislev is on the map and they found it, You're out of a religion and cant get Bretonia as an ally to help you defend.

Thoughts? Comments?

 

[Ahriman]

Yes, religion works differently here than in vanilla civ or in other mods. That is by design, and is a good thing. Religion here also represents a shared culture; it is very deliberate that the Salvation nations have the same religion, they tend to get on with each other ok.
Yes, you lose the ability to convert your neighbors your religion, but that is a deliberate design decision. If you have beastmen and orcs next to you as the Empire, you will never be able to convert them into having a similar culture to you - they are just inherently antagonistic towards your civ.
One of the design features of this mod is that each faction is much more "hard-coded" than in many mods or vanilla; they'll all play in a particular way each time, but each faction is more different. Allowing access to only a single religion for each faction helps to keep the factions unique, which is something that vanilla civ fails at.
If you're Elves, you're by nature a fairly isolationist nation - and this is partly modeled by the religious difference penalty you will get with nearly all civs, while if you're the Empire there are several civs that you can be friendly with. But on the other hand you start with your religion, and it automatically spreads in your newly founded cities. Different religions have different strengths and penalties, including the number of other factions who can get them (and who will compete with you for the shrine and for the religious hero).

Note that the religions mostly haven't been filled out yet, but will end up providing UUs and UBs for each faction that can adopt them. So, the Empire will get Priests of Sigmar from the salvation religion, while Brettonnia will get Battle Pilgrims, etc.
Chaos races will get various chaos demons.

Re: your concerns about getting a religion if surrounded by enemies.
It is intended (though not yet implemented) that factions that don't start with a religion will automatically get a free missionary when they discover the appropriate tech. So, if you're the Empire, even if a distant Kislev founds salvation and gets the shrine, you can still get and spread the salvation religion on your own, to get the happy/culture, UB and UU benefits. But if you're surrounded by enemies, your game will just be that much harder. Suck it up

I think the existing system works fine. Its *different* to vanilla civ, but not worse. So you have to find some new strategies; conquer your heretic neighbors and use inquisitors to convert them by the sword. The mod is designed to be combat intensive, and the inability to get your neighbors to like you through religion is one way to go about this.

 

[Korias]

I agree that the exsisting system works fine. I was also unaware of plans to include the missionary that comes with the tech ala FfH. And there is no doubt that the mod includes a very hard coded basis due to the immense backstory behind he mod's source material. However, I do enjoy the mod as-is, but what I'm suggesting is a way to maintain the fact that a mod should add enhancement to the game, and not turn the game into a linear story.

Besides, as a Warhammer Fantasy player, and the only one who plays the Brettonians at the store, I get shifted from good guys to bad guys quite often. As such, I've had occurences where its me and some Chaos vs the Lizardmen and Dwarves. In the mod, I applaud your ability to stick to the source and deny such odd alliances, but I do feel that a return to the idea of Civ4's religion is a way to ease the transition. I do love the combat intensiveness of this mod, but sometimes you can have four-five faction wars occuring at the same time. Epic, but annoying. While including a Custom Game Option to unlock religious choices would detract from the whole "War" part of Warhammer, it still gives (or at least, I feel it would give) a significant change in gameplay via giving the player to chose wether he wants to adopt a religion that would improve his standings with a larger civ, at the cost of angering another? How would the Empire feel if Kislev adopted Corruption as its state religion? War ensues, but Kislev has staved off war with its norther neighboor, the Beastmen. These choices couldhelp bring more choice to the game play, and even the option is just that- This isnt saying change the whole mod, this is just saying that adding a Custom Game option to drop religious restrictions would add a dynamic aspect to the game that it seems to lack.

 

[orlanth]

Ok, I've added the appropriate missionary-providing events to my events pack for the next version; that should eliminate the situation of getting stranded without a religion which was a big problem.

Without leaving everything so wide open to be out of flavor, it could be fun to allow a little more flexibility in certain circumstances so that every nation doesn't always play exactly the same. For example it is already planned for Ind to be able to follow either Spirituality or Chaos. I don't know how far we could take it though (perhaps an alternate Cathayan ruler choice who also happens to be a Necromancer?)

One feature that should be mentioned is that joining the Alliance or the Covenant gives a diplomatic bonus regardless of religion, and Neutral civs can be "persuaded" to join either one. We should add a diplo victory for being the head of one of those if all remaining civs are also members.

I think custom game options would be a great addition; though I personally wouldn't know how to go about coding one like you're describing.

 

[Ahriman]

but I do feel that a return to the idea of Civ4's religion is a way to ease the transition

I can't help but feel that seeing High Elves adopt corruption of chaos, or Bretonnians adopting Ancestor gods, or Orcs adopting Eternal Life would massively break immersion in the source material.

Plus, the religious units are all civ-specific, so there would be a ton of extra design-work (and invented units) to make it feasible.

One of things that I *dislike* about FFH is how factions just adopt the first religion that comes by; it breaks trying to play a role-played game when the Sheaim are Fellowship of Leaves, and the Elohim are Ashen Veil, etc. etc.

I see no problem with Law and Chaos alliances forming and being the same every game; Kislev will always hate the Kurgans. Cathay will always hate the Hung.

Do note that the design intention is for one faction (Ind) to be able to adopt *either* spirituality OR chaos, and get different unit access depending on which one they adopt.

 

[Korias]

I can't help but feel that seeing High Elves adopt corruption of chaos, or Bretonnians adopting Ancestor gods, or Orcs adopting Eternal Life would massively break immersion in the source material.

Plus, the religious units are all civ-specific, so there would be a ton of extra design-work (and invented units) to make it feasible.

.

I have to agree on both statements. Making the extra units WOULD be a massive time sink, and it just wouldnt work out. And yes, those combonations WOULD break the immersive aspect of the mod. FfH has this similar effect with the religions and such, where you can end up with the Luchiurp following the Octopus Overlords and such odd combos.

Even with the religious units, you could make it so you have to have THAT state religion. This would make the player more likely to adopt that religion over the other, to GET those units. I know that the choice of locking religions was deliberate and neccessary to achieve the goal set by the team, but this restriction forces almost the same game on each playthrough.

I see no problem with Law and Chaos alliances forming and being the same every game

Thats the problem, IMO. You will ALWAYS be forced into defensive pacts/allliances against the same group of enemies every game, based on your selection as a Civ. Vanilla let you play odd combonations of civs because there wasnt an inherent "Religious Difference" and you could easily convert one way or another. By adding this Custom Game option, you add more flexibility to the mod. I'm not suggesting we defeat the immersive point of the mod. Its a great achievment to be able to really feel as if you're playing Warhammer and not Civ4. But As a game mechanic, I feel that it detracts from the experience of having fun. The choice to have locked religions should be a choice the player has to decide- "Do I want to have an immersive experience of Warhammer lore, or do I want to play Civ4, Warhammer style?"

 

[orlanth]

Well, I can see your point in that it doesn't make sense to make lots of units simultaneously civ-specific and religion-specific if that civ will always have that same religion anyway. I can also see the appeal of having the option to play in an alternate world where things don't always develop the same way (after all it is a fantasy mod set in an alternate world!) I'll look in to if it's possible to easily generate an alternate XML, and if so I'll upload it for you to try out.

 

[orlanth]

Wow that was a lot easier than I expected - I basically just replaced the leader religion weights of negative 100% with positive 2%. Leaders will still have an extremely strong preference for their hardcoded religions, but if you somehow aggressively spread a religion to them and exert extreme pressure, it is possible for them to change if it's strongly in their interest a la vanilla Civ4. The human player will have the option to change to any religion present in his empire.

So feel free to play with or edit this "modmod" & let me know how it goes; just using this XML file is probably easier than trying to code a Game Option checkbox. Getting the free missionaries from tech discovery is probably most important for better gameplay, they will be in the upcoming version of the Warhammer mod.

To my surprise a few of the leaders already had a chance for alternate religions (such as Morathi with a 50% weight to turn to Chaos, and Akabar with a chance for Chaos, Salvation, or Spirituality), probably from when Ploeperpengel made the mod.


Instructions to play with Flexible Religions:

Go to Beyond the Sword/Warhammer/Assets/XML/Civilizations folder
Back up your existing CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.XML
Replace it with CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.XML from this zip

 

[Ahriman]

but this restriction forces almost the same game on each playthrough.

Yes, this is true to some extent. But we are willing to suffer the cost of having each faction be more the same on each run through, in order to gain the effectiveness of each faction playing very differently. It doesn't matter if every Bretonnian game is similar (involving massive production of knight units), because there are 12 other factions that you could play that will play very differently (no massed knight stacks for dwarves!).
In vanilla (and most mods) you need lots of different strats to be effective with a given faction, because all factions basically play the same. This is true even in FFH really, there are relatively few UUs or faction unique features. Less so in this mod.

Vanilla let you play odd combonations of civs because there wasnt an inherent "Religious Difference" and you could easily convert one way or another

But this "odd combinations of civs" was a cosmetic detail only, because all the various civs played basically the same. It didn't matter if you allied with the French or the Romans, because both played basically the same.

Well, I can see your point in that it doesn't make sense to make lots of units simultaneously civ-specific and religion-specific if that civ will always have that same religion anyway.

The advantages of this are:
a) Fluff. Priests of Sigmar are, fundamentally, religious units. Bloodletters of Khorne should require the worship of the chaos gods, and dedication to Khorne.
b) With religions harder to spread (I'm advocating for much more expensive missionaries), you won't always have your religion present (and temples built), particularly in conquered cities, so you won't be able to build these units everywhere.
We increase the value of spreading your religion and building temples by creating UUs that require them.
c) Competition for religious heroes; each faction can build a religious hero, but like the shrine there is a race; if another faction builds their religious hero first, you won't get yours. (You will also have non-religious faction-specific heroes).

To my surprise a few of the leaders already had a chance for alternate religions (such as Morathi with a 50% weight to turn to Chaos, and Akabar with a chance for Chaos, Salvation, or Spirituality), probably from when Ploeperpengel made the mod.

I vote no for this, except when we specifically design a faction to do so (like Ind; Akabar should get 50/50 weightings for chaos and spirituality, and some religious UUs for each. If we really want to consider a few other alternatives we could do so on a case-by-case basis, but I see no real benefit. There are enough chaos races already (Norsca, Kurgan, Hung, Beastmen, Chaos Dwarves, half Ind). More than any other religion.
Also, even if this is in AI adopt preferences, I still suspect there is somewhere else in the mod code that actually stops them from adopting their non-preferred religion, even if the AI wanted to.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

The solution, as far as I can tell, is to add an option into the custom-game menu that lets you disable religious restrictions. That way, it brings the mod a small bit of balance in that if this option WAS selected, religions would work as they normally do and therefore could be a much bigger factor in large maps, where having the same religion as your allies close by can stave off war.

this is a good idea, ill see if we can look into it later on in development

Ok, I've added the appropriate missionary-providing events to my events pack for the next version; that should eliminate the situation of getting stranded without a religion which was a big problem.

Without leaving everything so wide open to be out of flavor, it could be fun to allow a little more flexibility in certain circumstances so that every nation doesn't always play exactly the same. For example it is already planned for Ind to be able to follow either Spirituality or Chaos. I don't know how far we could take it though (perhaps an alternate Cathayan ruler choice who also happens to be a Necromancer?)

One feature that should be mentioned is that joining the Alliance or the Covenant gives a diplomatic bonus regardless of religion, and Neutral civs can be "persuaded" to join either one. We should add a diplo victory for being the head of one of those if all remaining civs are also members.

I think custom game options would be a great addition; though I personally wouldn't know how to go about coding one like you're describing.

perfect solution to the missionary thing Orlanth thanks *adds to 1.5*

a diplo vicotry with the covenant and alliance is a good idea me-likes

im also unsure about coding a custom game option but i inted to find out about this from kael later on down the line, so ill be revisiting all these ideas then.

Do note that the design intention is for one faction (Ind) to be able to adopt *either* spirituality OR chaos, and get different unit access depending on which one they adopt.

I vote no for this, except when we specifically design a faction to do so (like Ind; Akabar should get 50/50 weightings for chaos and spirituality, and some religious UUs for each. If we really want to consider a few other alternatives we could do so on a case-by-case basis, but I see no real benefit. There are enough chaos races already (Norsca, Kurgan, Hung, Beastmen, Chaos Dwarves, half Ind). More than any other religion.
Also, even if this is in AI adopt preferences, I still suspect there is somewhere else in the mod code that actually stops them from adopting their non-preferred religion, even if the AI wanted to.

just a little note: i would like to make other civs able to have 2 or more avaliable religion choices. ie Chaos dwarves following chaos or reverting to the old ways and following the ancestor gods. or DE following elven gods or chaos, or a chaos corrupted empire, or necromantic araby etc etc.

but as you say ahriman, only a few case specific civs (the biggest i think are Ind DE and CD) also, chaos is meant to be a huge force, so lots of chaos following civs is meant to be, the aim of the game is ultimately to sink the world into chaos or liberate it through any other means possible (chaos vs. the rest)

 

[orlanth]

i would like to make other civs able to have 2 or more avaliable religion choices. ie Chaos dwarves following chaos or reverting to the old ways and following the ancestor gods. or DE following elven gods or chaos, or a chaos corrupted empire, or necromantic araby etc etc.

Yeah I'd agree with that.. I actually do think it's important to try to make it so that it's not forcing almost exactly the same game / same groups of alliances on every playthrough; it should be achievable to tweak things to open up a few more religion possibilities without going too far to religious randomness that's out of flavor.

This should be very doable if we can rely on a core of the default religion units/buildings for alternate situations (i.e. Morathi can use the existing Daemons / Chaos Temples if she forsakes the Cult of Khaine for pure Chaos). Then having the proposed unique civ/religion UUs for civs with a strong religion affinity (ie Warrior-Priest of Sigmar) would be fine, and would fit well with the AI having a strong weighting to adopt that religion. The civs in themselves are getting so unique that adding the possibility to try modifying an existing army list with a few different religious twists would really add a lot of interest if done the right way.

even if this is in AI adopt preferences, I still suspect there is somewhere else in the mod code that actually stops them from adopting their non-preferred religion, even if the AI wanted to.

Surprisingly there wasn't, except in the sense that free elvengods everywhere is an enormous advantage to staying with EG, so you'd have to be weighted heavily *away* from it to ever consider changing. (Morathi never got around to changing to Chaos because it could almost never be in her interest, but the option was always there & chooseable.) Likewise in my debugger tests of the above mod, the AI virtually always ends up with the "intended" religion although it's free to change if you manipulate the situation so it really needs to; this is due to a combination of weightings (which can be overwhelmingly strong) and the important catalyst from the free missionary/tech events which are civ specific. I think that is fine; if the player intentionally sets out to play Dark Elves who turn to Chaos then he can, but the AI will virtually always stick to the canonical way.

 

[Ahriman]

This should be very doable if we can rely on a core of the default religion units/buildings for alternate situations (i.e. Morathi can use the existing Daemons / Chaos Temples if she forsakes the Cult of Khaine for pure Chaos).

You risk balance problems in doing this.
One problem would be the ability to double up on temples; build the elven gods temple, then convert to chaos and build the chaos temple. This could probably be fixed if rather than a "chaos temple class" there was a "temple" class, and each city could only have a single temple (and so any temple prevented you from building any other, and all temples were destroyed when a city was captured).
Another similar problem exists for UUs, particularly with National limits; you could build whatever Dark Elf religious units you get (Executioners maybe?) AND then get chaos demons as well. Unless you implement something like in FFH religious heroes where units abandon you if you change out of their religion, and associated AI code that stops an AI changing religion if they have units they'd lose.
Or unless we recode the religious units as common classes with shared national limits; but that seems more difficult.

I have no objection to a handful of dual-religion possibilities, it makes some sense for Dark Elves and Chaos Dwarves. But we would need to think carefully about such a system to avoid possible exploits. And I suspect that it would be better to go ahead with developing all the factions first, then expand them to multiple religions later.

Surprisingly there wasn't

Well, there's definitely something that stops the human player from adopting non-intended religions, right?


*edit*
And lets implement the chaos demons first, eh?
Still no-one has commented on my design for them, or made suggestions for what stats a Screamers of Tzeentch unit should have.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=290986&page=3

 

[orlanth]

You're right - it would probably work best just to have temples as individual classes like the Chaos ones currently are, and use the python check to keep one temple per city. It would be possible to use abandonment like in FfH, but your idea about just using a shared unitclass for religious units actually would make sense too.

Yeah there need to be more of the proposed units in, especially before adding more events/uprisings. I'd be willing to try coding in a few more of the units/buildings (some Chaos Demons etc) before the next release but don't want to cause merging problems; Psychic_Llamas could you upload the most recent unit/building XMLs to the team forum if there've been changes since 1.4?

I don't know much about Tzeentch Horrors etc; I think there are Blue and Pink Horrors with different effects (can cast Blue Fire vs Pink Fire?) Also, there could be a Flying Disc of Tzeentch (0 strength 2 move flying transport with Sentry I, can carry one hero/spellcaster but not full Warbands).

 

[Ahriman]

It would be possible to use abandonment like in FfH, but your idea about just using a shared unitclass for religious units actually would make sense too.

The problem is that we probably won't want the same religious unit slots across different religions. For chaos, we might want them to be able to get any 10 of the 4 demons together. Whereas for the Empire, we might want them to be able to get 5 priests of Sigmar and 3 Witch-hunters.

The Tzeentch demon should be of similar strength to the other ones; it will require the Tzeentch tech, which is fairly high up in the tree.

Yeah there need to be more of the proposed units in, especially before adding more events/uprisings. I'd be willing to try coding in a few more of the units/buildings (some Chaos Demons etc) before the next release but don't want to cause merging problems

We need some agreement on the combat system changes before we start adding units, do avoid doubling the work.
My suggestions are in post 48 of this thread. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=294492&page=3
Once we've done that, we can start adding units.

And then we can add Dwarves, Kislev, some Wood Elf, Dark Elf, chaos faction, greenskin faction changes pretty easily.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Yeah there need to be more of the proposed units in, especially before adding more events/uprisings. I'd be willing to try coding in a few more of the units/buildings (some Chaos Demons etc) before the next release but don't want to cause merging problems; Psychic_Llamas could you upload the most recent unit/building XMLs to the team forum if there've been changes since 1.4?

doing that as i type, ill post the link in the team forum.

I don't know much about Tzeentch Horrors etc; I think there are Blue and Pink Horrors with different effects (can cast Blue Fire vs Pink Fire?) Also, there could be a Flying Disc of Tzeentch (0 strength 2 move flying transport with Sentry I, can carry one hero/spellcaster but not full Warbands).

i believe when a pink horror is killed it turns into two blue horrors of lesser strength. allowing them to cast blue and pink fire respectivly would be cool (but would have to make pink horrors fairly costly then due to pink fire being RATHER deadly if used in conjunction with blue fire.)

Disk of Tzeentch would be cool, sacrifice on a hero or caster to add flying and +1 move point, ignore terrain movement cost.

Screamers of Tzeentch need to be in, have a fear causeing effect and ability to damage all units surrounding it via a 'scream' spell... flying as well.

 

[Ahriman]

How about:

• Unit Name: Screamers of Tzeentch
• Requirements: Temple of Tzeentch, Lore of Change tech, Corruption of Chaos state religion.
• Unit Class: demon
• Statistics: Strength 7, 2 moves, no metal weapons. Flying. Cause fear.
• Other Bonuses:
Starts with Mark of Tzeentch.
Can cast "scream" spell. Does 10% death damage (to a maximum of 15%) to all units in one adjacent stack.
Hammer cost: 140

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Can cast "scream" spell. Does 10% death damage (to a maximum of 15%) to all units in one adjacent stack.

id prefer less damage to ALL surrounding units. afterall how do you direct sound?

 

[Ahriman]

id prefer less damage to ALL surrounding units. afterall how do you direct sound?

You can direct sound pretty easily - you don't notice a difference standing in front of speakers vs standing behind them? Also, a tile can be a pretty big area, whereas realistically an army is occupying only a very small space on it. So if you're attacking a unit 1 tile to the east, then you are fighting on the eastern boundary of the tile, which might be many miles from the army in that is 1 tile to the west.
But the area effect works fine. How about 5% damage to all enemy units within 1 tile, to a max of 15%? I'm indifferent.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

But the area effect works fine. How about 5% damage to all enemy units within 1 tile, to a max of 15%? I'm indifferent.

yep im even considering the 'crown of brilliance' mechanic from FfH, where it austo casts the spell at the start of every turn. Screamers are known to be constantly screaming, its not something they turn off.

 

[deadliver]

I was playing the Norse tonite and I thought about this: how about if the player got a choice of being chaotic or not? Granted the fluff has mentioned for a long time that Norse are wild and chaotic however not all Norsemen are chaos worshippers. How about having two leaders? One that is Chaotic and one that is Neutral (Lawful seems whack).