[Revolution] Religion behaviour

[frekk]

The divide in Vedic versus modern Hinduism in Rapture is when the present Hindu gods began being worshipped. The two biggest denominations are to Vishnu and Shiva. I having them began around 500 BC. The older Vedic has Agni, Indra, and Mithra in Rapture. Total difference in gods worshipped.

More like a difference in status. Vishnu, for instance, is in the Rig Veda - and the Rig Veda comes from the early Vedic period. Also in the Yajurveda (Vedic, but not as early).

A heck of alot more attention is paid in the Rig Veda to gods like Agni, but have a look at their relationship to Vishnu:

1. MEN come not nigh thy majesty who growest beyond all bound and measure with thy body.
Both thy two regions of the earth, O Visnu, we know: thou God, knowest the highest also.
2. None who is born or being born, God Visnu, hath reached the utmost limit of thy grandeur.
The vast high vault of heaven hast thou supported, and fixed earth's eastern pinnacle securely.
3. Rich in sweet food be ye, and rich in milch-kine, with fertile pastures, fain to do men service.
Both these worlds, Visnu, hast thou stayed asunder, and firmly fixed the earth with pegs around it.
4. Ye have made spacious room for sacrificing by generating Surya, Dawn, and Agni.

Shiva is thought to be a composite deity whose emergence can't really be specifically dated, but may be tied to a deity in the Rig Veda called Rudra.

When Jesus died the the messiah cults did not immediately consider theirselves a separate religion.

Well, exactly. It was originally a schismatic sect of Judaism, a splinter cult.

Islam came from Judaism? It obviously has Christian influences as well.

No doubt. St John of Damascus, who was surrounded by early Islam, didn't even realize it was a separate religion - he just thought it was a new, frontier heresy of Christianity. The differences were certainly minimal at that time (even the kneeling during prayer was, originally, a tradition of Byzantine Christianity).

What are you looking for in a schism is the real question?

I can only speak for myself, but what I'm looking for is that any given 'early' religion would have a tendency to produce a specific 'late' religion. If your state religion was Judaism, and you founded a new religion, it would be Christianity (for example). For Buddhism and Hinduism you could do something where both are derivatives of each other (if you had Buddhism as your state religion and founded a new religion, it would be Hinduism, and vice-versa). The late religion, once it emerged, would also have a tendency to spread to cities which had the old religion.

If you had really developed the old religion and built alot of temples and so on, you might not want to lose the investment and start again from scratch, or you might have foreign relations that might be adversely affected by the new religion - so you would fight against its spread with inquisitors and so on. On the other hand, if you hadn't invested all that much or there were foreign benefits, it might not be worthwhile to fight, and you would simply accept the new religion being spread. Particularly if you were the founder and possessed the new Holy City but not the old one. If you were the founder of the old religion and had it's Holy City, you might fight like hell to keep it from spreading in your borders. All kinds of dynamics ...

Basically not really a change in the religions themselves, just in the mechanics of how they spread. So that a religion that emerged very late wouldn't necessarily fall to the wayside, but could very well supplant a widespread religion that had been founded earlier. Or not.

Increasing the number of religions doesn't make for a schism mechanic, no matter how many you include or whether they happen to share icons and buildings or not.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Actually, Frekk, this is another area where I think religious schisms would be very helpful from a "gameplay" perspective. One of the big issues I have with religion at the moment is that-given the same rate of spread-Hinduism & Buddhism will almost always end up dominating the map. If you have a schism model in place, then religions like these will probably be the most subject to schism due to their greater age & the diversity of civilizations to which it has spread (thus exposing them to greater dogmatic variation). This might help to prevent these religions from *always* dominating every game (especially if you include an Inquisition system).
Another thing which my civic mod did was to have an Evangelical vs Insular "Inter-Faith Relations" civic. The Evangelical Civic allowed the civ to build missionaries without the need for a monastery (like the existing Organized Civic Mod), wheras the Insular Civic prevented you from building missionaries at all. I confess this was a bit of a hack, as I also wanted to have a Civic tag which adjusted the spread rate of the religion.

Aussie.

 

[frekk]

Actually, Frekk, this is another area where I think religious schisms would be very helpful from a "gameplay" perspective. One of the big issues I have with religion at the moment is that-given the same rate of spread-Hinduism & Buddhism will almost always end up dominating the map. If you have a schism model in place, then religions like these will probably be the most subject to schism due to their greater age & the diversity of civilizations to which it has spread

Well, that has nothing to do with shcisms per se. Whatever mechanic you use to render early religions somehow vulnerable to the spread of newer (ie founded later in the game) religions, can be used just as easily with major religions as opposed to minor schisms. I.e. whatever makes Protestantism spread to Catholic cities, could just as easily be used to make Christianity spread to Jewish cities. Or Greco-Roman Pantheistic cities or however you want to set up the major religions and their derivatives.

For schisms to really work, though, you'd need an additional layer of complexity: less hostility between denominations of the same religion as opposed to more hostility with entirely different religions altogether. Otherwise they're not really schisms in game terms; they work the same as new religions and we're not really talking about anything different, other than the names and the number of religions. It really doesn't matter much in terms of mechanics if you call the original and supplanter religion Lutheranism and Anglicanism, or Judaism and Christianity. That's just a flavour thing. So is the total number of religions. IMO, anything that can be called a flavour change ought to be left to a module. The mechanic behind one religion (whether it can be called a schism or an entirely new religion) supplanting another is what we should be talking about.

Why is everyone talking about new civics? Ideally, the system would work independantly of new civics. The simpler it is and the more portable it is, the better. New civics should be like a modmod - cool, maybe, but not necessary for balance and functioning of the new game mechanic. Similarly, if this is for use in Revolutions (RevDCM in particular) it should be able to function well in isolation without any of the other optional features like Inquisition. It should interact in interesting ways with something like Inquisitions, but it shouldn't be dependant on it for balance.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Sorry Frekk, but as a student of History let me assure you that more people have died as a result of sectarian violence than have died as a result of inter-religious warfare. Hundreds of thousands-possibly millions-of people died in the Wars of Religion in Europe following the rise of Protestantism. Even today, Shi'ites kill Sunnis, and vice versa, and the Protestant/Catholic conflict in Ireland still hasn't completely abated.
Also, although I mention extra civics a lot (because I think they're needed to add more depth to religion-whether you have schisms or not) the schism system I envisage would not need the civics in order to work (though I would like a version which does). Indeed, you could structure it in the manner of a random event. If you're Christian (State Religion) you could have something like a "95 Theses" event where-if you have a Cathedral, a Priest Specialist (or Super-specialist) and are under Organized or Theocratic Civic, then you get a choice of how to respond to this priest who has just nailed his Theses to the door of the cathedral.

Aussie.

 

[frekk]

Sorry Frekk, but as a student of History let me assure you that more people have died as a result of sectarian violence than have died as a result of inter-religious warfare. Hundreds of thousands-possibly millions-of people died in the Wars of Religion in Europe following the rise of Protestantism.

Even today, Shi'ites kill Sunnis, and vice versa, and the Protestant/Catholic conflict in Ireland still hasn't completely abated.

They're proximate to one another. Conflict between proximate groups is expected, and it will occur on the fault lines of whatever differences they have, religious denomination being one of them.

Nor would I agree with your statistical assessment. Have you studied much about Hungary, the Balkans, Israel, etc? Places like France and Ireland loom larger in our consciousness (being that we are of the Commonwealth) and places like southeastern Europe occupy a very diminished and obscure part. Do you know what a homunculus is? The way we perceive history is very similar. Ireland's conflicts are so minor in terms of statistics, and France's were intense but extraordinarily brief compared to the longstanding conflicts between Christians and Muslims in places like Romania, Hungary, and the Balkans.

And the thing is, it's internal conflict for the most part. The Wars of Religion in France or the Troubles in Ireland weren't wars between states. Sectarian conflict doesn't generally have a great impact on international relations, with a few exceptions (like England vs Spain etc; not entirely a religious matter, though), and those only between proximates (the Catholics of Northern Ireland don't want to go to Sweden and cause trouble there, nor do the Protestants want to go to Hungary and have a march through Catholic Budapest. They're only really involved in conflict with the denomination of their immediate neighbours). WW3 might start over something the Israelis do, but it won't start because of anything the Republicans or Loyalists in Belfast do. Hungarian, Italian, or Swedish Christians just don't worry about it much, no matter whether they happen to be Protestant or Catholic. But they would if the Republicans were Islamic rather than Catholic!

But historical debate is something of a distraction here.

In any case, we're still just talking about a flavour difference, for purposes of the game. The problem is: religions founded late in the game don't fluorish, except by strenuous effort on the part of a (human) player. The solution could be a mechanic whereby early religions are rendered vulnerable to the spread of late ones, and each early religion is vulnerable to a specific late religion - call it a derivative religion or a schism, that's arbitrary, the mechanic doesn't need to be any different. Flavours like denominations, the way I see it, can be added in later. It's a different issue - the mechanic ought to work no matter how you choose to divide the religions, which ones you include, or how many there are. In other words, it should work with the 7 base religions without requiring any other changes.

If a mechanic like that can be devised which works for the religions as they are now, then denominations - or any other setup which could make good use of the new mechanic - can easily be added in separately as a module, and can capitalize on the mechanic.

The less dependant the mechanic is on the specifics of the religious setup, the more utility it has and the more mod-friendly it is. Adding denominations is just a matter of adding some new religions, which really doesn't have anything to do with the mechanic itself.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I think for me that the biggest change I want to see to religions-with or without schisms-is how they are founded. Are you familiar with the True Prophet mod? It was a bit of a hack, but it tied the founding of religions to both the techs & Great Prophets. In order to work, though, it would require some representation of "religion" (like early temples, monasteries, sacred groves et al) prior to the foundation of the major religions-so that you can generate the necessary Great Prophet points. In the same vain, you might have a Great Prophet be able to do a "Cause Schism" mission-using a similar mechanic to a trade mission for Great Merchants. Schisms could only be done within cities that have an existing religion, and the "new" religion would have to be in some way connected to the existing religion (like your Christianity from Judaism thing).
How does that sound?

Aussie.

 

[frekk]

Are you familiar with the True Prophet mod? It was a bit of a hack, but it tied the founding of religions to both the techs & Great Prophets. In order to work, though, it would require some representation of "religion" (like early temples, monasteries, sacred groves et al) prior to the foundation of the major religions-so that you can generate the necessary Great Prophet points.

There are other ways to get GPs. You can assign a GP to be given to the first person to discover a particular tech. I've also seen mods that give a unit to anyone who discovers a specific tech, not just the first. And I suppose really, you could have a GP appear according to pretty much any variable you wanted with the right coding.

Or you could have generic pagan temples that don't require any 'religion', that become obsolete.

Another thing that might be interesting, is if religions don't appear so predictably at all - if they were somehow founded as an event, triggered like other events. Then you could even have some choices about how to respond - for instance, you could have three choices:

-adopt it as a state religion, and all your cities with the old religion could get some unhappiness for a few turns;
-suppress it, and it will cause unhappiness wherever it's present until you adopt it as the state religion
-(Free Religion required) allow followers of the new faith to practice their religion and encourage tolerance; no particular effect

I don't know if it's possible to do that or not though.

 

[johny smith]

Guys check out Rapture. The prophet can make another religion based on having a preexisting religion. Like if you are catholic you can make protestant. Well please just look at it. I have some useful things anyway. I do not mean use all Rapture. Just thought you should give it a look. The SDK is not totally finished it it yet.

 

[johny smith]

Sorry I was in a rush before. The schism mission is generic in Rapture. It is set in the xml. You have a tag in the religioninfos called "parent religion". So you can set if you wanted Judaism as a normal religion and Christianity as a split from it. To do it add the tag "parent religion Judaism" to Christianity for example.

If you want to see how it is setup in Rapture I have a folder for each religion group and then there is one folder called control. In the control folder I have multiple religioninfo files. One sets the parents and then one sets the dominations. You do not have to have the entire xml file for this just the relative pieces. Anyway it has been done.

Now there are automatic schisms as well which are not really tweaked good yet. I would not bother with those that is more complicated, but it has religions randomly appear regardless of what the players do.

You need one of the parent religions and a prophet to perform a manual schism. A pop up appears and ask for which parent religion you want to make a schism from and after that the selection of a new religion from the group is random. It does not remove a religion when it adds one. I want to add the ability remove a religion in a schism when I can as well in but only in some cases like based on stability of a city.

Here is a link of the latest version I am working on. It is big because of sounds and movie files.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=321507

 

[MechatronicJazz]

I think you guys need to focus this discusion a little more. Schisms are an interesting idea, but please remember to keep ideas simple. Also, I've noticed a few argument popping up about where religions have come from in real life, whether or not they are the same thing, etc. I think gameplay should be the primary focus here. Realism is always secondary and if you get caught up in historical details nothing is going to move forward.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Locce, I do kind of agree with you. That is why I think we need to answer some basic questions in order to determine the best way to implement schisms. Those questions I feel are:

1. Should a schism system involve just "major religions"? Just denominations? Or both?
Indeed, should denominations even be in the model?

2. What kind of cap should we have on the total number of religions/denominations in the game? Should it be based on map size?

3. Should schisms be linked to Prophets? To missionaries? To random events? Or maybe a mixture?

4. Assuming you can engineer a schism yourself, should it be limited only to your own cities, or should you be able to cause schisms in other people's cities?

5. What impacts should a schisms have on a city (happiness, health, yields, commerces, new buildings etc etc)? In a related question, should the old religion remain in the city, or should it be removed?

6. What impacts should a schism have on foreign relations?

7. Do you think any changes would need to be made to the existing religion civics? I'm thinking new tags like <iSchismModifier> or <iReligionSpreadModifier>.

Anyway, hope that helps to ground things a bit.

 

[johny smith]

Aussie answers to your questions first.

1. Any in the SDK. WoC Modules each mod can decide for theirself. It is not hardcoded in the SDK which religion is the parent and which is the child.

2. It should be relative to map size. 0 as in zero religions should actually be added I think to RevDCM. This should all be in modules for RevDCM and there should be global define to adjust how many in game are running even on top of map size adjustement.

3.Prophets and events. If you guys ever look at Rapture. I have dates that you can set for when a religion has an automatic schism. And in this range it is random when it occurs but will happen regardless.

4.You should be able to make schisms in other cities if you have open borders. That would be the most logical thing to do. Otherwise it would not be so useful I think. If you have someone with the AP and tired of the holy power you can make quite a mess for him or her.

5.Well with removing first. In Rapture I am going to change it to prevent schisms from occuring in a city with a holy city I think as default. Why. Because people would not want holy cities removed, and the city will stack a lot of religions otherwise. But yes in the city it occured the older should be removed in my opinion, and you should have schism wave effect of cities around it having a chance of it occuring. And again based on some stability modifier wether or not it occurs. I also have religion decay which you can set for say Hinduism for example. There is an era and civic tag for the decay effect. I have the text displaying and more in a newer SDK working on now by faichele in the WoC Full.

Yields and etc. I don't think it is needed. Maybe anarchy for few turns in a city.

6.Should not matter. Unless you adopt the religion. And if you do then what. You still get a penalty to diplomacy regardless really. Only thing might be for a period of time their would be problems between the parent and child religion maybe, but that is more complicated to do I think.

7. This is more complicated and something that I am working on now. I am adding a spriitual commerce in Rapture. You can make spiritual commerce just like you make culture with religious buildings. I have not put it in the latest yet. I have been busy with art for now. The idea is though each religious building produces spiritual commerce. So the more spiritual commerce generated for a particular religion it effects the spread rate.

And again I am just peeing in the wind if no one really looks at the functions in Rapture I have.

I don't understand what can be more generic then what is already made for the schism. You set everything in the xml. I am working on hoping to improve on it now. But it has been done already. You do not have to add religions to the game. You can use religions already in game, and not add any. The RevDCM core should not add a ton of garbage. Modules are there to add more so everyone can choose for theirselves.

 

[frekk]

I like the sounds of Rapture ... but I don't really like the idea of engineering a schism. On the other hand, it wouldn't be any more disagreeable than the way you engineer religions now, by beelining techs, so I really shouldn't complain.

I don't really like the idea of child religions not being able to be present in the same city as the parent religion, or one removing the other. There are lots of places where offshoots and their progenitors coexisted (often with alot of conflict, but still). I don't think the mechanics there should be any different than they usually are in Revolutions for cities with different religions, keeping in mind that with Revolutions, it's not easy to maintain religious diversity.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Trust me Johny, your Rapture system sounds pretty damn close to the way I want a religion system to work-I really must take some time to look at it. Heck, it might even give me some great ideas for revamping my civics mod for BtS. I really would like a system for founding religions similar to the way True Prophets mod worked (which was, itself, a harbinger of the corporation model). Having a period of time enjoying true "Paganism/Polytheism" prior to gaining sufficient GP points to found a religion would be really cool, and would eliminate some of the beelining problems that frekk refers to. I also think that prophets as the instigators of both religions and schisms is perfectly fair, as these people are those who-historically-really did change the course of their society and/or religion.

Aussie.

 

[johny smith]

Well as it set now there are no religions removed from schisms. I am trying to tune the mod better is why I want to remove some in the schism. I am not thinking automatically the religion is removed during a schism. I am thinking there is several factors that determine if a religion is removed or if a new religion can be founded. And this is only for Parent versus Child. Not other religions.

Factors to are....
1. State Religion
2. Stability
3. Holy City
4. Spiritual Commerce in a city from buildings
5. A hard limit set on the amount of religions in a city determined by a player.

I am only using 7 religions founded from techs at this point in Rapture. And those 7 are the parents. So I never really looked into the idea of just True Prophet. I really think it gets confusing to have 2 classes of prophets.

Well anyway the point of the whole entire thing would be able to turn things on and off in the global defines. If you do not like manual schisms for example turn them off. It would have to be all able to be customized.

 

[johny smith]

Sorry just wanted to say I patched up the 3.19 version of Rapture now. I had left some things commented out that left manual schisms and inquisitions not available. Anyway I posted a just dll if it was downloaded before, and sorry ahead of time. I also put in my 48 shamans (108 new units in all)recently as well if not seen yet. Anyway I hope someone will let me know some feedback anyway on it.

 

[Duneflower]

Here's an idea I've had brewing in my head for a while now; I'm planning on implementing it in NwT 1.2 or so, but I thought I'd throw it out here and see if people thought it might be worth implementing in RevDCM.

It's sort of an answer for those situations where you want/need to do something tech-wise early on that doesn't involve beelining for a religion, especially if you're off by yourself for a while, but find yourself needing temples or what-have-you to make your empire run more smoothly: Your people's everyday spirituality becomes so prevalent that it becomes a major force in your culture, a Native Faith. Mechanically, your people's Native Faith would emerge in the first city that gets its either 2nd or 3rd expansion, provided that:

• You've discovered Mysticism
• Your Native Faith has not already emerged
• The city has no other religions present

Once in play, a Native Faith functions just like any other religion; however, they don't have shrines, and probably don't have cathedral-equivalents (maybe not even monasteries?). They can spread across borders, but only to cities that have no other religions present (and maybe at lower probability?) - but once they've taken root in a given nation, they can spread just like they do in their native lands. This simulates things like the traditional Greek pantheon basically taking over Rome.

 

[johny smith]

I am already doing something similar. Each civ begins with a religion though and it does not spread to other civs. You have just a temple for it. Then you can build a wonder that gives you a cult within that religion. The cult can be spread to another civ only by a unit, and when the cult is spread there is a chance the original religion will spread.

For example you begin as Greece you get Hellenism(only certain civs can start with it). Then you can build the Statue of Zeus if you have Hellenism as a religion. (If not Hellenism you can not build it.) After building it you receive the Zeus cult. You can then spread the Zeus cult to other civs with a Zeus Shaman(not by regular mechanics), and after another civ has the Zeus cult there is a slight chance the civ can receive Hellenism.

 

[BobTheTerrible]

I am already doing something similar. Each civ begins with a religion though and it does not spread to other civs.

I haven't played your mod, but I have a few suggestions (which you may already be implementing):

"Native civ" religions should not trigger negative diplo modifiers. They also should not have holy cities (the only religions with holy cities should be the stand-out, major religions). Schisms and the like (religions breaking off from another) should share the same holy city as the parent religion's city. Some of the other minor religions should also not have holy cities. Religions without holy cities could also spread to barbarians (to add some variety to barb cities).

The 7 major religions should be just that: major religions. The rest should be considered minor religions, which decay over time if science spending/literacy/education reaches a certain percent (i.e, with the spread of libraries in the classical era, ancient religions should die out).

The game should be balanced so that there are only 5-7 dominant religions at one time. 2 main reasons for this: adding religions for the sake of religions is silly, and civ-mechanics-wise, there needs to be several civs sharing a religion in order for it to be worth it (if every civ has its own religion, it's silly because they all get negative modifiers with each other. Part of the point of religions in this game is to get civs into "blocks" of allies). Also, if you keep adding religions which have holy cities, on smaller maps, every city in the world could easily be holy if you have lots of religions.

Although, to reiterate, this is clearly too much complexity to add into base RevDCM, I do think it would be interesting as a module if you balance the religions properly. I'd love seeing religions rise and fall just like civilizations do in this mod, just please tweak it so that the minor religions don't get in the way of overall game/diplo balance.

 

[johny smith]

Well a lot of things thought about in the past already. Holy cities are there for denominations like normal religions but the point was to really limit how many come in play based on the map size and player decision. And that is going to be controlled by xml, but still waiting for faichele to put in his fixes on that. I mean if I would not have holy cities then catholic would have a holy city and orthodox would not. That is not good I think to most players, but at the same time they are not meant to all appear. Right now the code has automatic schism that just fill in the cities per years randomly based on the dates they appear. That is going to be limited severely when I get it done. I mean it makes no sense to have too many religions out there.

The earlier Native what I called pagan religions are treated same diplomacy wise. There is still holy cities but that does not mean they produce the same amount of global commerce. The holy cities are planned to swap based on who has the highest spiritual commerce from within the group. And the cults have holy cities as well but again no global commerce. Pagans are not going to use the Apostolic Palace I mean. None of pagan holy cites act like a holy city but they give benefits still over just having the religion.

As for Apostolic Palace that is something I wanted to do as well was have more of them if possible in the future. One possibly per group and was thinking of changing the diplomacy to count religions in groups versus individual religions. So alliances were planned to recongnize denominations as part of the same group, but at the same time have not so good relations as the same exact religion. So for example all Christians could announce a holy war and call on all Christian denominations for help. But it is not even started yet. But a lot ideas of making better religion alliances anyway.

I am only suggesting that some of the stuff could be used. Not the complete mod. I am adding in an earlier era as well now so the mod could never fully be used I think. It may never even get done, but I want something really new. Just altering slightly to me is not enough for my full mod.