True Prophets
- Thread starter Kidinnu
- Start date
Aussie_Lurker
Deity
My whole problem with how the vanilla system works IS how clustered the early religions are. So much so that-with or without this mod-I definitely intend to shift things like Meditation, so that they appear somewhat later in the tech tree, in order to get better spread of religion founding. If this was coupled with a need for prophets and techs, however, then I think that we would get a nice spread between the earliest and latest religions.
Anyway, sounds like the testing is coming along nicely Kidinnu-keep up the fantastic work
.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
Anyway, sounds like the testing is coming along nicely Kidinnu-keep up the fantastic work
.Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
RED DIAMOND
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2005
- Messages
- 380
Yeah I found most of what you guys are dealing with when I modded my religion and tech tree. What I ended up doing was throwing out history in leiu of gameplay. Once I did that putting all of the religion tech at the start of the tree solved all of these problems with religion monopoly and added a yet to be seen international flavor from the start.
I also added the religious victory condition and it is now tough to get 30% of the world converted. Much better game overall.
I also added the religious victory condition and it is now tough to get 30% of the world converted. Much better game overall.
Robo Magic Man
Prince
I like the idea a lot, but it seems like it would take a very long time to get great prophets the conventional way (or at least much longer than it takes to research a religious tech). Is there a way to speed up the great person benefits of the pagan temple to get your first prophet faster, and then bring the speed back to normal after the first prophet?
Kidinnu
Chieftain
Start the game with cheat mode turned on in your .ini file, hit backquote (`) to bring up the console, type "Game.AIPlay 150" (for 150 turns), wait about half an hour. (It's safe to minimize the window during this time, and maybe even a little faster.) Your civilization will have been autodestroyed, but the others will have played through the ensuing time. Hit control-Z to go into godmode - reveals the entire map and all units, lets you look at any player's information screens. There's a difference between the ` console and the ~ console that I don't understand.saetrum said:
I was thinking about this last night (while folding laundry) and remembered the hitch: AI. I've had to write some custom AI code to get the computer to found religions, and it currently only fires when the prophets are born. The computer won't plan to found religions later, since it doesn't understand the idea. Now, if you give the computer a big stack of prophets it will save one in case it manages to found a religion later, so that it could build the shrine right away. I think I can work with this, so that the saved prophet is instead used to found a religion as soon as the AI discovers the tech, but it'll take more coding.kidinnu said:
I forgot to post the Great People distribution last night: 12 prophets, 1 artist, 12 scientists, 1 merchant, 5 engineers in 180 turns.
robo magic man said:
I'm happy with the current speed, so I don't intend to have this be a standard part of the mod, but it wouldn't be hard to hack in something that doubled the GPP rate of priests as long as there were no religions founded, so that it was a real race to be first. You'd probably want to double Stonehenge and Oracle too, to keep them useful. What would take much more work would be updating the city display screens and F1 to correctly report GPP during that period.
To me that creates a real problem. It makes the religions *much* more interchangable, getting rid of the last hint of real-world flavor that was attached to them.red diamond said:
RED DIAMOND
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2005
- Messages
- 380
Kidinnu said:
No actually in practice religion is "less" interchangable when they are all founded at the start of the tech tree. It also adds "more" flavor to international relations.
Take this example. Custom conts. 11 AI's and me. In this one I like 6 islands/conts. This gives me and maybe one other civ a lone island start. Remember, all religions are founded within the first 10 turns and now you begin to build your civ.
Fast forward to contact with other civs. What you find is 11 others civs and 6other religions(I founded Islam). Now, trying to spread to the new civs is much different/harder. The likelyhood of international tension is higher because of the different religions. There is also a race to indoctrinate the non-founding civs with your religion etc... The civs that have been touched by another religion will adopt it as state and getting them to switch is more fun.
I could go on about how the flavor is enhanced and gameplay is actually MUCH better. Many more religious wars etc. I might add to this, I also enhanced the civics to 45 total choices. The additional options of civics social engineering and early religion really adds so much to this game, it has to be seen to be totally understood.
Kidinnu
Chieftain
We'll just have to agree to having different tastes here; I find the texture of racing for early religions, and religions with wildly varying dominances, more interesting than what sounds like seven religions each with two or three adherents. I find plenty of competition to spread religion in either the vanilla rules or my playtests of this mod; even when I as the player sprint to a religion around 1200 BC, if my neighbor founds Islam in 1 AD and converts two of his neighbors I know I'm in trouble no matter how large my bloc.RED DIAMOND said:
Caveats: I've only toyed with games set up like yours, never put a lot of time into them. If there were some ability to have varying relationships between religions, a la Europa Universalis, then the more even spread might be interesting. However, right now, all religions appear to be equally intolerant of each other, and equally tolerant of pagans.
Bast
Protector of Cats
Yes. You should think about combining these two mods.Badmojo said:
Let's think about this. Religions have advantages and disadvantages. For instance, with Judaism you can't use clam, pig etc... Therefore when you get your prophet, and you try to get your first religion, you should get a religion that will suit you geographically, demographically etc... That's how the real religions evolved.
Islam is islam because the religion was started and followed by people living in mostly desert areas.
This would make it perfect.
I mean you don't even need to combine mods, just give advantages and disadvantages to the religions.
RED DIAMOND
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2005
- Messages
- 380
Kidinnu said:
Taste, hmm maybe, but I really think it has more to do with actual gameplay under the settings I described. Without real seat time I think it is really to hard to conceptualize based on some clear misunderstandings about how the setup actually operates in practice. No worries.
![[to_xp]Gekko](https://civfanatics-data.community.forum/avatars/m/74/74677.jpg?1475248346){kind=avatar}
[to_xp]Gekko
QCT junkie
Bast said:
What he said. Realistic Religions + True Prophets = Civ4 Religion-related fun is doubled
This does sound terrific, especially the last few comments about combining it with realistic religions. I've been playing abbamouse religions and like it the best so far, but find that Zororastrianism tends to dominate, which isn't very realistic. Great graphics though.
One thing that has always bugged me about the vanilla religions is that a civ that founds a religion will never convert to another one no matter what. It would be more fun it it were possible for a founding civ to convert at times, even if it's more difficult for them than a non-founding civ.
One thing that has always bugged me about the vanilla religions is that a civ that founds a religion will never convert to another one no matter what. It would be more fun it it were possible for a founding civ to convert at times, even if it's more difficult for them than a non-founding civ.
Roland Johansen
Deity
This sounds like a really good idea and reading about the AI-played games, it seems like it works also. Great job.
One thing though, I don't think that the AI realizes that there is a race to get the first great prophet out so that it can found a religion. The human player clearly realizes this and will prioritize the construction of the first pagan temple and the assigning of the first priest. After that, the human player will probably not bother with pagan temples and priests except when the happiness bonus or culture boost of the temple is useful. This is a clear advantage for the human player in comparison to the AI. At the highest difficulty levels, it can be a daunting task to found a religion in the vanilla game. But I don't think that it will be as difficult in this mod. We can of course solve this by playing at higher difficulty levels, but giving the AI all kinds of bonuses is not very elegant.
I was thinking of another way that was maybe easier for the AI to compete with the human player. Maybe, you'll like it.
What if the construction of say 3 pagan temples allowed the construction of a new small wonder, the Great Temple, that produced 2 free priest specialists. At the same time, the pagan temples ability of assigning priest specialists would be removed (reducing the value and thus the cost of these temples a little). In this way, there are still a lot of resources needed to get a religion because the construction of the three temples and especially the construction of the Great Temple would cost a lot of resources. But on the other hand, the race to obtain a religion between the human and the AI is probably a bit more fair. I think that the AI will go for such a small wonder, while not understanding the connection with obtaining a religion. The Great Temple should of course get a very high religion value for the AI, so that it will build it as soon as possible (like a human would). With the production bonuses that the AI gets at the higher difficulty levels, it will be a challenge again to found a religion.
Some details: If possible, the Great Temple could transform into the religious shrine for a specific religion when it is founded. The nations that fail on the race for the religions, will still have a Great Temple. That's not as good as the shrine of a religion, but still nice.
There will probably be more variation in the time needed to build the Great Temple between the various nations. So maybe that difference in founding time of religions that you were looking for will be present in the game in a natural way.
One thing though, I don't think that the AI realizes that there is a race to get the first great prophet out so that it can found a religion. The human player clearly realizes this and will prioritize the construction of the first pagan temple and the assigning of the first priest. After that, the human player will probably not bother with pagan temples and priests except when the happiness bonus or culture boost of the temple is useful. This is a clear advantage for the human player in comparison to the AI. At the highest difficulty levels, it can be a daunting task to found a religion in the vanilla game. But I don't think that it will be as difficult in this mod. We can of course solve this by playing at higher difficulty levels, but giving the AI all kinds of bonuses is not very elegant.
I was thinking of another way that was maybe easier for the AI to compete with the human player. Maybe, you'll like it.
What if the construction of say 3 pagan temples allowed the construction of a new small wonder, the Great Temple, that produced 2 free priest specialists. At the same time, the pagan temples ability of assigning priest specialists would be removed (reducing the value and thus the cost of these temples a little). In this way, there are still a lot of resources needed to get a religion because the construction of the three temples and especially the construction of the Great Temple would cost a lot of resources. But on the other hand, the race to obtain a religion between the human and the AI is probably a bit more fair. I think that the AI will go for such a small wonder, while not understanding the connection with obtaining a religion. The Great Temple should of course get a very high religion value for the AI, so that it will build it as soon as possible (like a human would). With the production bonuses that the AI gets at the higher difficulty levels, it will be a challenge again to found a religion.
Some details: If possible, the Great Temple could transform into the religious shrine for a specific religion when it is founded. The nations that fail on the race for the religions, will still have a Great Temple. That's not as good as the shrine of a religion, but still nice.
There will probably be more variation in the time needed to build the Great Temple between the various nations. So maybe that difference in founding time of religions that you were looking for will be present in the game in a natural way.
Great mod!
I have always been upset when I lost the race for a religion tech by one turn. With this mod, you get no religions for free.
I would also suggest the Pagan Temple to give +1 culture, and the Obelisk to be dropped. Some of the religious techs can also be dropped, to make the game more "slim".
I have always been upset when I lost the race for a religion tech by one turn. With this mod, you get no religions for free.
I would also suggest the Pagan Temple to give +1 culture, and the Obelisk to be dropped. Some of the religious techs can also be dropped, to make the game more "slim".
AWolfe
Chieftain
Then don't use the mod.Fachy said:
Che Guava
The Juicy Revolutionary
A suggestion for "pagan" cities (keeping in mind I would have no idea how to mod this in): every city that has pagan temple has a 10% chance per turn of developing a proto-religion, or 'cult' based on a nearby resource. This cult would spring up in a city with no religion, would not spread to other cities or allow any more improvements to be built, and could only remain if the religion civic is paganism. It would, however, give a small growth/production/commerce bonus, based on the resource the cult is founded on.
For eg: Calcutta has had no city religion for 12 turns, and sponaneously founds a "Wheat Cult": the worship of the the wheat harvest. Calcutta now receives a 1+ food bonus for every tile in its radius that has wheat, as well as one extra great prophet point. A couple of turns later, Judaism spreads to Calcutta, and the cult (and its bonuses) disappear.
I think this kind of system would give a nice little nod to our pagan roots, as well as give an incentive to spread your own religion to those not 'enlightened'. Spread your religion to your heathen neighbours and watch as thier earthy pagan ways erode, and lose bonuses related to thier former dieties.
For eg: Calcutta has had no city religion for 12 turns, and sponaneously founds a "Wheat Cult": the worship of the the wheat harvest. Calcutta now receives a 1+ food bonus for every tile in its radius that has wheat, as well as one extra great prophet point. A couple of turns later, Judaism spreads to Calcutta, and the cult (and its bonuses) disappear.
I think this kind of system would give a nice little nod to our pagan roots, as well as give an incentive to spread your own religion to those not 'enlightened'. Spread your religion to your heathen neighbours and watch as thier earthy pagan ways erode, and lose bonuses related to thier former dieties.
Kidinnu
Chieftain
Posting 060 now. Changes are (as predicted in message #17):
Pagan temple has same cost, bonuses as a normal temple.
Pagan temple has same prerequisites (priesthood!), plus can only be built in cities without religion.
When religion spreads to a city, any pagan temple present converts to the new religion.
AIs will found multiple religions if they're using, or want to use (Elizabeth), Free Religion.
Free time's been scarce (especially since I tried playing Europa Europa - EU was lots of fun, but Civ is just too slow to reproduce it pleasantly), so I haven't been able to do the AI work necessary to put technology prerequisites back in.
Many of the other suggestions have merit (I particularly like Che Guava's), but are outside the scope of what I'm trying to do. I'm happy to give advice if other people want to fork my mod.
Pagan temple has same cost, bonuses as a normal temple.
Pagan temple has same prerequisites (priesthood!), plus can only be built in cities without religion.
When religion spreads to a city, any pagan temple present converts to the new religion.
AIs will found multiple religions if they're using, or want to use (Elizabeth), Free Religion.
Free time's been scarce (especially since I tried playing Europa Europa - EU was lots of fun, but Civ is just too slow to reproduce it pleasantly), so I haven't been able to do the AI work necessary to put technology prerequisites back in.
Many of the other suggestions have merit (I particularly like Che Guava's), but are outside the scope of what I'm trying to do. I'm happy to give advice if other people want to fork my mod.
