Religion symbols

[Rodion Romanovich]

You've probably seen the small symbols for Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Paganism in the UI in RTW-BI. Now I need similar ones for the AOVAF relgions. There are three symbols per religion:

pip_religion_RELIGIONNAME_positive.tga
pip_religion_RELIGIONNAME_negative.tga
pip_religion_RELIGIONNAME.tga

My suggestions for how they could look (suggestions for the remaining ones needed):

Catholics - use RTWBI Christian symbol (cross)
Orthodox - use golden cross
Judaism - david's star
Sunni Islam - ? moon?
Shia Islam - ? crescent moon?
Steppe paganism - ?
Viking paganism/Asatrú - thor's hammer

- all "RELIGIONNAME.tga" symbols should be in color
- all "RELIGIONNAME_positive.tga" symbols should be in color, imo same as the "RELIGIONNAME.tga" symbols
- all "RELIGIONNAME_negative.tga" symbols should be in red
(my opinion, not a necessity )

keep in mind the symbols are so small that any detailed symbols won't be possible to use.

[Archbaker]

Does Steppe Paganism include the religion of Great Moravia? If so, I think a "quadrifrons" (with three visible faces) statue of Svantevit would do.

Sunni and Shi'a I would just give crescent moons in different colours. Green and Black?

[Rodion Romanovich]

Steppe may or may not include Great Moravia, not sure yet. I like your other suggestions, but what is a quadrifons? Also the symbols are so tiny that very few ideas are possible, it mustn't be a too detailed symbol because it'll be impossible to see with the in-game sizing.

[Archbaker]

A quadrifrons has four heads. In this case it would basically be two mirrorred profiles and possibly a frontal face in the middle, like this:
<^O_O^>

Or this:
~:handball: ~D:director:

It's probably not something you can make that small. And it is Slavic. I don't know the first thing about other kinds of steppe paganism.

[GoreBag]

An animal head or something like that might be a good symbol, but I don't know which animal head would be appropriate, if one is at all.

[Afsin]

[removed]

[Archbaker]

"I am personally not in favour of using a crescent as the symbol for Islam because of this:(...)"

That doesn't say that the crescent is not a symbol of Islam, though, only that early rulers tried to avoid using it. It is still a commonly known symbol of Islam, and even at that time it was probably more used than any other single symbol.
I like your suggestion a lot, but I doubt it will work in such a small icon size.

[Rodion Romanovich]

@Afsin: hm, I also think those might be too detailed for such small icons. A green and a black crescent sounds fine to me, but which one should be black and which one green?

@NeonGod: animal head sounds great! I'll see if it's possible to make a wolf, if not a horse is probably quite easy

[ScionTheWorm]

@Afsin: hm, I also think those might be too detailed for such small icons. A green and a black crescent sounds fine to me, but which one should be black and which one green?

@NeonGod: animal head sounds great! I'll see if it's possible to make a wolf, if not a horse is probably quite easy
I think wolf would be bad ass. Horses sucks. Haven't seen the religion symbols, are they large?

[Rodion Romanovich]

No, very very small. Perhaps only 20-30 pixels in width and height...

Edit: They're actually the exact same size as the symbols for unrest, trade bonus etc. in the settlement details scroll, and they're quite small.

[skeletor]

If the hammer of thor get's too big, we could allways use some rounes.

-Skel-

[Meneldil]

I think the hammer will be alright.

On thing though, I just read on the scriptorium 'how to add a new religion' topic that new religions might not have any effect on unrest, which would deeply suck. Any info about that ?

[Rodion Romanovich]

No info yet. It's being researched by alpaca, but my tests so far agree that the new religions don't seem to cause unrest. But I don't know, perhaps only the largest non-official religion of the settlement causes unrest? Maybe someone should test that?

[Csatadi]

Steppe paganism - ?
The tree of life of course.
The upper branches reach the spirit world, the roots go to the underworld.
The shaman and the t&#225;ltos at the Magyars must climb the tree to contact with the spirits.

Moravians hadn't steppen culture. They were Christians or Slavic pagans. I don't know which one in this period.

[Reverend Joe]

Here are my two cents:

Steppe Pagans- the idea with the tree sounds good. Just make it simple:

\|/
|||
/|\

Something like that- 3 branches, and 3 roots.

Sunni Islam- a golden crescent with the open face facing right (
Shiite Islam- a black crescent, with the open face facing up \_/ (not a crescent, but you get the point. The different directions would further help to distinguish the two. Also, I am slightly color-blind, so I might have a hard time with black and green crescents.)

[GoreBag]

..or Slavic Pagans...

Oh, yeah. How will other pagans be represented?

[Rodion Romanovich]

Other paganism will probably not be included, or chosen the closest to steppe or asatru paganism... We might add a generic paganism too, but I'm not sure atm, as there's some problems with modding religions. Any more than 3 causes trouble that so far hasn't been solved - new religions don't cause unrest.

In any case, here's some new info on the religion symbols: they should be 16*16 pixels, 32 bit .tga files. I don't have any program that can save .tgas at the moment so I can't make these symbols in a while...

[Csatadi]

If only 3 religions can be included they may be:
-paganism (difference can appears as separate temples or sacred places) sign: the original symbol can remain, isnt it?
-christianity (is it important to separate the catholic and orthodox types?) sign: cross
-islam (only one type?) sign: crescent moon
Actually the islam hadnt got any symbol in this ages. They got this symbol from the sign of Constantinople after 1453. But there isnt any better choice.

The only interesting religion is Khazars' judaism. Pagan or Christian? Rather pagan because of technical reasons.
I think Khazars should build pagan sacred places, mosques maybe even christian temples and a synagogue as a first level shrine, as an addition to the main temple. If the Khazars remain pagans the leaders can appear as israelite but without any converting ability. (Their people was pagan.)
If the player decide to choose Christianity or Islam no problem.
The synagogue shouldnt give any conversion bonuses it maybe gives some bonus and the chance of hiring rabbies.
The only disadvantage is the Khazars cannot choose full paganism. Supposing this is a flaw.
Opinions?

[Rodion Romanovich]

I agree, that's what we should do. Pity the 1.6 patch didn't fix the religions issue, as 3 religions limits things quite a lot.

[Nacheras]

Sorry, Csatadi, but at less at Al-Andalus caliphate were used flags with crescent moons around X or XI century. About this you can see my post of a andalusian flag at the thread about banners.

[Csatadi]

Sorry, Csatadi, but at less at Al-Andalus caliphate were used flags with crescent moons around X or XI century. About this you can see my post of a andalusian flag at the thread about banners.
Really? Fine. But it isnt a religious symbol.
The essence is we agree in this symbol.

[Hrafninn_flygur]

Wouldent the jewis religion be better as christian? I mean the christian nations had a better view on the jewish religion then the pagan ones. Jewish people could live in christian lands, pagans were killed.
And didnt the jewish people disliked pagans as much as the christians?

[Csatadi]

The leaders of the Khazar Khaganate had Jewish religion but their people were mostly Pagan and some Christian and Muslim.
We want to represent this in the game. Because their people were Pagan it seems to be the most appropriate to set this "religion". I hope we can sign the israelite religion of the leaders. Again. This is a pure technical issue and not moral. Even that leaders thougth the same - earlier they were islamic after defeated by the Arabs. Choosing the israelite religion was the sign of their choose of independence. They didnt want to join to the Christians not the Muslims.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Actually when I think about it, Judaism could be added as a fourth religion. Any religion outside the first three will not have religious unrest.

But - Judaism didn't cause much unrest and rebellions in this period because the Jews mostly kept their religion despite whatever the official religion was, unless there were taken direct actions against their right to practise the religion and culture. So it could be possible to represent Judaism with a religion without unrest. Apart from that though, our possibilities are limited to choosing Judaims to "be" either paganism or christianity. I don't know which of the three possibilities people would like most though. Comments are welcome.

So, here are the three possibilities:
- add Judaism as a fourth religion, but it won't cause religious unrest as the other religions when someone of another religion conquers the settlement he'll be able to hold it without religious unrest.
- represent Judaism as Paganism
- represent Judaism as Christianity

Please comment on these possibilities.

[Archbaker]

I think Judaism should be a fourth religion. The Khazars, according to some historians, chose it as a state religion exactly because it would not offend their neighbours, so this would be a good way to portray their relative neutrality. And Judaism doesn't really try to spread the word in the way Islam and Christianity does, anyway.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Ok, the problem is when the opposite situation comes - if a non-Jewish settlement is conquered by a Jewish conqueror, there will be unrest until the settlement has converted. But if a Jewish settlement is conquered by a non-Jewish conqueror, the settlement will lack unrest. The upside is however that the Khazars can freely switch between religions if they have a large Jewish population in their cities, without getting unrest.

[Archbaker]

If the Jews were to move a gentile general into a city, say a family member born in a Pagan city or a bribed enemy, could they avoid unrest?

Ptherwise, I think the best alternative would be to only have three 'real' religions, but to make synagogues occupy the same slot as other religious buildings, but not actually cause any conversion, and to make a 'Jewish' anti-trait to the other religious traits which also doesn't cause any conversion or unrest.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I'm wondering if scripting could get around the problems and generate unrest for us. Then we could replace all religion_unrest symbols with the normal unrest symbol, and make it transparent what is religious and normal unrest. Then we could use all 7 religion slots available, and automatically generate our unrest, but it would have some negative interface consequences.

Alternatively, we could put 3 dummy religions first, which would have no usage in-game, then 4 unrest-free religions afterwards, for which we use scripting to generate unrest. The latter would look better in-game than the 7 religions system would, for a number of reasons, so we have the choice of either 3 religions which would be easy to implement, or 4 religions that would be difficult (hopefully not impossible) to implement. If we choose 4 religions Christianity-Islam-Paganism-Judaism would probably be the best choice IMO (if we can't have both sunni-shia and catholic-orthodox using only one of them seems strange). If we can have all 7 we could again use Catholic-Orthodox-Judaism-Shia-Sunni-Asatru-Shamanism.

[Csatadi]

Anybody can suggest a better and short word instead of pagan - paganism?

[Csatadi]

I found a new way for religious traits what can be useful for AOVAF, too.
It can handle the spread of christianity and religion shifts.

[beauchamp]

Heres what I propose for the shia and sunni symbols

Sunni: just a crecent, this was originally a pagan arab symbol.

Shi'a: either the Lion of Allah or Zulfikar (the sword of Mohammed which was given to Ali and then was present at Karbala with Husayn)

http://www.amaana.org/alilion.gif

also, I belive that there should be a third branch included, the Nizari's or as today they are called the Ismaili's. They belived that the last Imam was the
7th Imam, and that Nizar was the correct succesor of Mohammed. Ill find out their symbol later. They in fact were the "assassins" and the word we know today originated from their name. Although they were banished to Iran, they went and served as killers for many emirs and caliphs. They were thought to be "hashishin" because some belived that they would take hashish to put them in the killing mood.

[almazor]

very nice,i read something tha the banners of the abbaside were black and the allaouite the sons of ali were red and ommayades whith te tree banners are decorated by somme verset of coran.
i like this mod more than athors