Tech Tree Revisions

[Vokarya]

I don't like Divine Prophets. I think it's way too abusable if you DON'T use the Prophets to found religions. Once you have your first religion, you can use the Prophets from other techs to lightbulb more techs and jump ahead in the tech tree.

I don't actually think making the AI aware of the need to build a Shrine to found a religion would be complicated. The AI is already programmed to beeline religious techs if it doesn't have a religion founded. The tech is the only thing needed to unlock the Shrine. If we increase the AI weights and/or religion flavors of the Shrines and cost the Shrines appropriately to get the AI to build them as quickly as possible, that would solve the problem. Then the AI code would have a religion founded and not have to concentrate on going after religions any more.

Does this sound reasonable?

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

I think you then leaving it up to random great person generation, for the ability to found a religion. What if you have a run of low odds spawning of Great Engineers/Merchants, etc.

Your stuck on the founding tech for MANY MANY TURNS, and then once you get a profit, you find you can found x+3 religions, which do you choose.??

 

[Vokarya]

I think you then leaving it up to random great person generation, for the ability to found a religion. What if you have a run of low odds spawning of Great Engineers/Merchants, etc.

Your stuck on the founding tech for MANY MANY TURNS, and then once you get a profit, you find you can found x+3 religions, which do you choose.??

The Shrines will get a regular cost so you can build them without a Prophet. The Prophet will still have the ability to instantly build a Shrine in the same way that a Great Artist can build the Heroic Epic/National Epic. You can either use a GP or build the building the normal way.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I don't like Divine Prophets. I think it's way too abusable if you DON'T use the Prophets to found religions. Once you have your first religion, you can use the Prophets from other techs to lightbulb more techs and jump ahead in the tech tree.

I don't actually think making the AI aware of the need to build a Shrine to found a religion would be complicated. The AI is already programmed to beeline religious techs if it doesn't have a religion founded. The tech is the only thing needed to unlock the Shrine. If we increase the AI weights and/or religion flavors of the Shrines and cost the Shrines appropriately to get the AI to build them as quickly as possible, that would solve the problem. Then the AI code would have a religion founded and not have to concentrate on going after religions any more.

Does this sound reasonable?

I don't think you can get that far with Great Prophets like that, but it's ok we can leave alone Divine Prophets. I'll see what I can do with Shrines but it will need some time. What I would definitely avoid anyway is using <bNoHolyCity>, at least if the holy city is the one with the shrine. I'm perfectly fine with having a city which is the holy city of more than one religion, don't you think it's realistic?

 

[Vokarya]

I don't think you can get that far with Great Prophets like that, but it's ok we can leave alone Divine Prophets. I'll see what I can do with Shrines but it will need some time. What I would definitely avoid anyway is using <bNoHolyCity>, at least if the holy city is the one with the shrine. I'm perfectly fine with having a city which is the holy city of more than one religion, don't you think it's realistic?

It's probably realistic, but <bNoHolyCity> is a switch we might have to throw in the name of game balance if stacking 2-3 holy cities proves to be too strong. If we turn off <bNoLimit> on the shrines, I think that would probably be a sufficient check. I was thinking <bNoHolyCity> wouldn't stop you from founding your first religion because the city wouldn't be a Holy City while building the shrine, but then you couldn't found a second religion there. I didn't really work with the ability, so I don't know for sure.

There is no hurry on this. It was a blue-sky idea that I came across a while ago and it seemed derivative enough of our current mechanics to be at least possible.

 

[<Nexus>]

It's an idea that I was planning to do in Chronicles (with the tools I have access). My advice is this:

Create a dummy tech for each and every religion.
Create a new wonder for each and every religion: Holy Book.
You build a Holy Book* in any of your cities --> get the tech of the religion --> the Holy City is placed by the regular random method. Than you build the Shrine in the Holy City*

* IMO both the Holy Books and the Shrines should be buildable in the regular slow way and instantly by a Great Prophet.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

It's an idea that I was planning to do in Chronicles (with the tools I have access). My advice is this:

Create a dummy tech for each and every religion.
Create a new wonder for each and every religion: Holy Book.
You build a Holy Book* in any of your cities --> get the tech of the religion --> the Holy City is placed by the regular random method. Than you build the Shrine in the Holy City*

* IMO both the Holy Books and the Shrines should be buildable in the regular slow way and instantly by a Great Prophet.

Not a bad idea, I like it. Only thing I'm not sure of is if a Wonder can grant a dummy tech or simply a specific tech. That wouldn't be too difficult to add anyway, I think.

 

[<Nexus>]

Not a bad idea, I like it. Only thing I'm not sure of is if a Wonder can grant a dummy tech or simply a specific tech. That wouldn't be too difficult to add anyway, I think.

Sure you would need extra coding. Would love to have an xml tag that gives a specified free tech.

 

[Vokarya]

Not a bad idea, I like it. Only thing I'm not sure of is if a Wonder can grant a dummy tech or simply a specific tech. That wouldn't be too difficult to add anyway, I think.

You'd need either new XML code or a Python routine. onBuildingBuilt would work here. I'm not much a fan of dummy techs for any reason. I would have gotten rid of Special Promotion some time ago except that it's needed for Greek Fire to work properly. Event-exclusive promotions, like Segmented Armor, can work without a tech requirement as long as you don't make them available to unit classes in the promotion code. The event that grants the promotion can work around any requirements. Melee units normally can't get City Garrison I and Siege units normally can't get Combat I, but there are events that can do that. Greek Fire is not event-specific, so it does need the dummy tech for the Wonder to assign it but units can't take it normally.

 

[<Nexus>]

I wrote "dummy tech" bit IMO once we start using them for religion funding they shall be considered "special techs".

I also don't like Myths being buildings since those are not structures in any sense... but that is the only way to implement the idea so I'm okay with it.
So sometimes we can /have to brake some rules. Don't say that this is the only good solution but not a bad one IMO.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

You'd need either new XML code or a Python routine. onBuildingBuilt would work here. I'm not much a fan of dummy techs for any reason. I would have gotten rid of Special Promotion some time ago except that it's needed for Greek Fire to work properly. Event-exclusive promotions, like Segmented Armor, can work without a tech requirement as long as you don't make them available to unit classes in the promotion code. The event that grants the promotion can work around any requirements. Melee units normally can't get City Garrison I and Siege units normally can't get Combat I, but there are events that can do that. Greek Fire is not event-specific, so it does need the dummy tech for the Wonder to assign it but units can't take it normally.

In general I don't like "dummy techs" either. But I'm not a python fan and in this case adapting onBuildingBuilt to grant a tech or found a religion looks a bit problematic to me, especially since I'm not an expert in python. I should try and see but I think it's easier to gift a tech on Holy Book completion because the code for techs granting religions is already there and I only need to code a tag for granting a specific tech when building a wonder. Even if I could be able to code in python onBuildingBuilt to found a religion, I would probably have to adapt the dll beside coding the python routine. Is there really any reason for you to dislike a dummy tech solution in this case?

Edit: in this case I would definitely not use the bNoHolyCity tag but neither bNoLimit, so having two religions founded in the same city would be hard but not impossible. Or we could make the Holy City a partially random choice, as I think it currently is, and not necessarily the city with the Holy Book or the Shrine.

 

[Vokarya]

In general I don't like "dummy techs" either. But I'm not a python fan and in this case adapting onBuildingBuilt to grant a tech or found a religion looks a bit problematic to me, especially since I'm not an expert in python. I should try and see but I think it's easier to gift a tech on Holy Book completion because the code for techs granting religions is already there and I only need to code a tag for granting a specific tech when building a wonder. Even if I could be able to code in python onBuildingBuilt to found a religion, I would probably have to adapt the dll beside coding the python routine. Is there really any reason for you to dislike a dummy tech solution in this case?

Edit: in this case I would definitely not use the bNoHolyCity tag but neither bNoLimit, so having two religions founded in the same city would be hard but not impossible. Or we could make the Holy City a partially random choice, as I think it currently is, and not necessarily the city with the Holy Book or the Shrine.

I'm saying I REALLY don't want Holy Book in the main mod, and I'd appreciate it if my original proposal wasn't derailed; I'm perfectly fine with leaving Holy Book to modmods. It just looks to me like HB is simply adding a hoop for everyone to jump through without much of a payoff.

What I'm proposing is more a rearrangement of the steps we already have: discover tech - found religion - build Shrine becomes discover tech - build Shrine - found religion. The additional payoff for spending the resources (hammers or Great Engineer or Great Prophet) to build the Shrine is that you get to choose exactly which city gets to be your Holy City instead of relying on (somewhat-random) chance. That is part of the point of the proposal.

 

[<Nexus>]

In general I don't like "dummy techs" either. But I'm not a python fan and in this case adapting onBuildingBuilt to grant a tech or found a religion looks a bit problematic to me, especially since I'm not an expert in python. I should try and see but I think it's easier to gift a tech on Holy Book completion because the code for techs granting religions is already there and I only need to code a tag for granting a specific tech when building a wonder. Even if I could be able to code in python onBuildingBuilt to found a religion, I would probably have to adapt the dll beside coding the python routine. Is there really any reason for you to dislike a dummy tech solution in this case?

BTW: With the dummy tech solution I think we could solve the MAD civic problem too: Building a First Nuclear Test would unlock the dummy tech for MAD.

Religion founding:
Why do wee need to tie religions to techs at all?

 

[<Nexus>]

Why do wee need to tie religions to techs at all?

Why do we need religions to be bound to techs and be founded in the accurate historical order? Civilizations aren't tied to eras - America can be an ancient civ while Sumeria can appear in the modern era as a rebel civ. So why should religions be different?

I know... Balance! We don't want one civ to found too many religions. But IMO there is a better solution for that than the tech tree.
Let me explain what I had in mind for my modmod:

I would divide religions into two categories:

Traditional religion are the ones that evolved from folklore and mythology into a religion (these are usually polytheistic).
Kemetism, Hellenism, Asatru, Naghualism, Hinduism and Shinto would all have the same spread factor and require Mythology as a tech requirement. Each Holy Book would also have a special map related requirement:

Kemetism: flood plain (the Nile) in city vicinity AND max latitude of 40°
Hellenism: peak (Mt. Olympos) in city vicinity AND sea tile in city vicinity
Asatru: min latitude 50°
Naghualism: jungle in city vicinity AND access to Gold OR Silver (El Dorado)
Hinduism: river (Indus) in city vicinity AND access to Cow OR Elephant (holy animal)
Shinto: peak (Mt. Fuji) in city vicinity AND access to Rice OR Tea

Prophetic religions are ones that were started by "reformer", a prophet (these are usually monotheistic).
Judaism, Zoroastrianis, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Christianity and Islam would also have the same spread factor (but higher than traditional religions), require Scriptures and a Great Prophet to build their Holy Book.


This method would also have the (IMO positive) side effect that not all religions would be founded on all maps. Bigger maps should have more religions.
I also think that it would be better if religions were founded roughly at the same time in different areas of the world.

 

[Vokarya]

Let's leave the radical redesigns for later. I prefer to work within existing mechanics. What I proposed was taking an existing tag (<FoundsCorporation>) and modifying it to <FoundsReligion>, not ripping out the entire founding subsystem and trying to plug in a new one.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

@ZN Way too complex for me and to tell the truth I don't see any real reason why we should change current method
I definitely don't want regions to be founded later than they currently are, hence I'm worried by the Shrine proposal. And I see no reason why I should be able to pick a city to found a religion, current method looks OK to me. Also connecting religion founding to shrines instead of techs requires some probably complex and unnecessary rearrangement of dll code, and I'm definitely not sure it's worth it.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Let's leave the radical redesigns for later. I prefer to work within existing mechanics. What I proposed was taking an existing tag (<FoundsCorporation>) and modifying it to <FoundsReligion>, not ripping out the entire founding subsystem and trying to plug in a new one.

ok, I'll think about it but it will require some time.

 

[Vokarya]

@ZN Way too complex for me and to tell the truth I don't see any real reason why we should change current method
I definitely don't want regions to be founded later than they currently are, hence I'm worried by the Shrine proposal. And I see no reason why I should be able to pick a city to found a religion, current method looks OK to me. Also connecting religion founding to shrines instead of techs requires some probably complex and unnecessary rearrangement of dll code, and I'm definitely not sure it's worth it.

So as not to slow down religion founding too much, I was thinking that the Shrines would be relatively cheap. A starting point might be HALF the cost of a regular Wonder of the era. The idea is to have the Shrines not require as much investment as other Wonders, but just expensive enough that a player who lost the tech race by a turn or two but had a Great Prophet or Engineer waiting in the wings could sneak in and steal the Shrine.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

So as not to slow down religion founding too much, I was thinking that the Shrines would be relatively cheap. A starting point might be HALF the cost of a regular Wonder of the era. The idea is to have the Shrines not require as much investment as other Wonders, but just expensive enough that a player who lost the tech race by a turn or two but had a Great Prophet or Engineer waiting in the wings could sneak in and steal the Shrine.

IF we go this way with Shrines, they would definitely need to be resized in cost; starting with half the cost might be ok. What I really don't get is why we need all these changes. Just to make it so that anyone can choose where to found a religion? Because I really don't see many religions being founded by the same civ right now, I think they're spread enough in the tech tree. Are there other benefits that I've missed (given that picking your holy city is a benefit, and I'm not sure about it: looks more like an exploit to me)? All of this started by rearranging Islam/Education/Divine Right/Shinto. On the subject it's ok for me to move Shinto to Divine Right (in its new position in the tech tree), while leaving alone Islam. I think anyway we might need some testing because I REALLY don't want religions to be founded later than they currently are, except maybe for very few turns necessary to build a shrine (and I mean 2-3 turns on blitz gamespeed).

 

[Vokarya]

IF we go this way with Shrines, they would definitely need to be resized in cost; starting with half the cost might be ok. What I really don't get is why we need all these changes. Just to make it so that anyone can choose where to found a religion? Because I really don't see many religions being founded by the same civ right now, I think they're spread enough in the tech tree. Are there other benefits that I've missed (given that picking your holy city is a benefit, and I'm not sure about it: looks more like an exploit to me)? All of this started by rearranging Islam/Education/Divine Right/Shinto. On the subject it's ok for me to move Shinto to Divine Right (in its new position in the tech tree), while leaving alone Islam. I think anyway we might need some testing because I REALLY don't want religions to be founded later than they currently are, except maybe for very few turns necessary to build a shrine (and I mean 2-3 turns on blitz gamespeed).

If you don't like the idea, then we can drop it. I thought shifting religion founding to the Shrines was a good idea because it made Holy City placement a strategic decision rather than random, it didn't seem that far removed from a mechanic we already had (founding corporations with HQ buildings), and it made founding religions not 100% dependent on the single factor of being first to the founding tech. But if you see problems with it that I didn't, I can accept that.