Removing and changing religions from a scenario

[Sanguivorant]

Hello, I am Sanguivorant. So I started playing Civilization IV about a month ago, and I really like the game. Eventually (or we can say yesterday), I started to try a little bit of scenario making. To better understand my question, my scenario is basically about the colonization of South America, with the two Iberian civilizations and two prominent South American civilization, the Incans and the Mayans.

So there is nothing wrong with the scenario it-self, and almost everything is complete, and historically accurate, with the Iberians starting with certain advantageous techs and whatnot. I have knowledge of XML editing from Age of Empires III, so I was able to configure practically all the settings.

In the scenario, only the Portuguese and Spanish are supposed to have a religion, which is Christianity. This is where the problem comes. After a few turns, all the religions get founded in random areas, and that somewhat kills historical accuracy and mostly game advantage.

I want to get rid of all religions in the scenario except for Christianity and perhaps buddhism. Here are possible actions I want to do. If possible, please assist me in doing them by telling me how to do it.

1) Remove the unwanted religions from the scenario.
2) Prevent the techs that found unwanted religions to be researchable in the scenario (Knowing how to code this would definitely help me in making this scenario more accurate in terms of other techs).

Also, if possible, I would like to mod only the name of Hinduism and perhaps change the name to Shamanism, for just the scenario. How may I accomplish this?

Here is what I have done so far:

•Made the Iberian state religion Christianity, and Native Hinduism.
•Made a "South American Religions" mod that has only a CIV4ReligionInfo file that has all unwanted religions removed. The mod was unable to load due to errors.
•Literally changed all Hinduism in the South American Religions mod into Shamanism in text. The mod was unable to load as well.

Perhaps someone could give me a quick guide on how to properly mod files such as these? I am not familiar with civilization coding.

Thank-you if you are able to help.

 

[isenchine]

I'm not a very experienced modder but I will start to try to clarify a few things. Religions are of course a complex system in Civ4.

You said that the mod was unable to load due to errors, I can imagine some:

- Units unable to load properly: missionaries for all other religions which should be removed as well (UnitInfos but also UnitClassInfos in the appropriate folder).

- Buildings to remove for all other religions: Temples, Monasteries, Cathedrals, Shrines (BuildingInfos + BuildingClassInfos)

- Great Prophets: look at their entry in the UnitInfos file (UNITCLASS_PROPHET): their ability to build the shrines of other religions should be removed.

Lots of work but doable. What is much more annoying is the symbols used by the game in the Assets/res/Fonts folder (2 GameFonts file). Remove religions and you mess up with the system. So you would have to change those tga files. Still doable but a special exercise in itself which could become a nightmare for some...

A way around all this is to keep all religions in the game. Then you create fake technologies for the religions. Those fake technologies should be disabled: there's a tag <bDisable>0</bDisable> that should be set to 1. You then change the ReligionInfo file to associate all other religions with those fake technologies (maybe just one Tech for all other religions would do).

Then you rename Hinduism as Shamanism in the Text files: search for TXT_KEY_RELIGION_HINDUISM and all other text tags for Hindu missionary and Hindu buildings. You could also create a unique tech only for Mayans and Incas to research Hinduism/Shamanism.

That's all I'm thinking of right now. Maybe others will add things as well. Errors should then be reduced and would guide you.

Oh yeah, some people also created a seperate Shamanism Religion with its specific Missionary/Buildings but that's another story...

Edit: even a Toltec one!

 

[Sanguivorant]

Thank-you for your help, and great thanks to the disable tag you have given me. This will not only help me with the religion problem in the scenario, but could keep the game at a certain time-line, by disabling some other techs.

I'll try this out and see what I come up with.

Alright, so what I have done was create my mod, which involved some changes to the techinfo and the religioninfo.

I made a new tech, named TECH_CENSOR. This tech is unobtainable.

For all unwanted religions, I made the tech requirement the TECH_CENSOR. I write the mod directory in the scenario text and I test. It still says there are errors, and I will list the faults:

•element content is invalid according to the DTD/Schema. Source is, <bDisable>1</bDisable>.

•LoadXML call failed for Technolohies/CIV4TechInfos.xml

•Tag: TECH_CENSOR in Info class was incorrect. Current XML file is: xml\gameInfo/CIV4ReligionInfo.xml

I have some idea of what this means, but I don't know what action I should take to solve this. Any suggestions?

 

[isenchine]

Good. And by the way... Welcome to CFC!

 

[The_J]

I guess you might have taken the TechInfos.xml from the base game and not from BtS, that would explain it.
Alternatively you might have accidentially deleted a line in your new tech, so check if everything needed is there.

 

[isenchine]

I only read your edit now.

@ The_J: It seems that the tag Disable was already in the base game, but of course other tags might have been changed between the base game and Bts, assuming that Sanguivorant is playing with Bts 3.19.

@ Sanguivorant: what do you mean by "I write the mod directory in the scenario text", do you mean that you already have a .CivBeyondSwordWBSave file?

By the way, this error "•Tag: TECH_CENSOR in Info class was incorrect. Current XML file is: xml\gameInfo/CIV4ReligionInfo.xml" so far is normal since the TechInfos file did not load properly.