A question of faith...

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

After deciding to recode the vanilla RTW traits, I've also decided to include BI's religions in the mod. My main inspiration for this was alpaca's [BI] Adding a new religion tutorial.

There were of course 3 religions in BI - Paganism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity. However, the religious setting in the timeperiod of Rome was completely different to the way it was in Barbarian Invasion, namely that Christianity did not yet exist. For this reason, I've decided to replace Christianity with Judaism. This makes sense because Judaism is an ancient religion, and was in existance even before the rise of western civilization.

With the help of alpaca's tutorial, I've now coded BI's religions (as well as Judaism) into RTW. However, I'm yet to test whether the various triggers (similar to the ones used in BI) work correctly. Additionally, I've made use of several of BI's traits and triggers, which have been tweaked as necessary, as well as creating my own from scratch.

I would like to hear some historical input in relation to provincial religious build-up. This would enable a fairly accurate religious background to be included in the mod; otherwise estimation and placeholders may be the only option. Since each region requires a religious percentage value (split between any of the 3 religious categories), any historical sources relating to this would be appreciated.

I've used the Prologue (Sons Of Mars) provincial campaign to run a few brief tests to date. Here are some screens of my progress:









Thanks.

[Avicenna]

But apart from the Parthian, Selucid and Armenian territories as Zoroastrian and Jerusalem as Judean, the rest would be Pagan. It would be a pagan monopoly, almost.

[symball]

you really need at least four religions to do it justice, roman, greek, pagan and zoroastrian. is this possible with the current set up?

edit- and is it really worth it when each faction will only have one natural religion, unlike BI where christianity was starting to supplant the more established religions of most of the factions.

[Avicenna]

Paganism should be the same overall. The Romans and Greeks had the same gods, apart from a few special Italian ones. The Mediterranean civilisations basically identified with the same gods, with just different names. So, Judaism, perhaps Zoroastrianism (not sure about that) and Paganism.

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Thanks for the feedback guys!

But apart from the Parthian, Selucid and Armenian territories as Zoroastrian and Jerusalem as Judean, the rest would be Pagan. It would be a pagan monopoly, almost.

This is true, especially during the start of a campaign where most of the known world would probably have a Pagan majority. However, there are some regions (such as Noricum, Juvavum) that had significant proportions of other religions. In the case of Juvavum, this settlement's name reflected its significant number of Jewish residents.

Its regions such as this where I could do with some historical support, any obvious regions that were non-Pagan really need to be distinguishable from the rest.

you really need at least four religions to do it justice, roman, greek, pagan and zoroastrian. is this possible with the current set up?

edit- and is it really worth it when each faction will only have one natural religion, unlike BI where christianity was starting to supplant the more established religions of most of the factions.

The problem (discussed in the tutorial) is that adding more than 3 religions doesn't seem to work properly. The religious conversion strengths for example looks to be set-up for the first 3 religions; any additional religions can feature in the game, but their conversion effects are ignored.

Paganism should be the same overall. The Romans and Greeks had the same gods, apart from a few special Italian ones. The Mediterranean civilisations basically identified with the same gods, with just different names. So, Judaism, perhaps Zoroastrianism (not sure about that) and Paganism.

Yeah I agree. Paganism was essentially Polytheism, in other words the worship of a set of gods and godesses of varying status and importance. Judaism and Zoroastrianism on the other hand were Monotheism, in other words the worship of a sole god alone.

To aid conversion effects for Judaism and Zoroastrianism, perhaps agents', family members' etc conversion strengths could be set at a higher rate than Paganism. This would give these religions a chance against the probable Pagan monopoly religion. Also, this could reflect the strength of the preaching of Monotheism compared to Polytheism.

Additionally, specific triggers could be created that skews religious bias in certain factions' family members, agents etc, depending upon their starting location on the campaign map. What do you think?

[alpaca]

Hum if I remember correctly, conversion works allright but the fourth and following religions don't cause unrest (which is actually quite interesting for a religion like Judaism that would historically never be the official settlement religion).

[Makanyane]

Has anyone looked at how the Ai copes with religion? I don't think the AI destoy's existing buildings, so if the 'wrong' religions temple is built before a region is conquered, conquest & conversion will just result in increasing unrest & prevent access to superior units / benefits.

we've tried altering temple effects to automatically change effects in EDB
ie:

temple_of_farming_large_temple requires factions { carthaginian, }
{
capability
{
happiness_bonus bonus 3
farming_level bonus 3
law_bonus bonus 2
religious_belief believer 4 requires factions { carthage, }
religious_belief pagan 4 requires not factions { carthage, }
}

which was for a specific play as carthage mod....

Am wondering if something like this is needed to adapt all the conversion factors and recruitment conditionals for the AI factions, if multiple temples / religions are used, to prevent them being handicapped.

[wlesmana]

Speaking of buildings and religious effects: does anyone know if the AI is smart enough to destroy a building that gives it negative effects?

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Hum if I remember correctly, conversion works allright but the fourth and following religions don't cause unrest (which is actually quite interesting for a religion like Judaism that would historically never be the official settlement religion).

Thanks for clearing this up mate, I couldn't remember which exact feature did not work when the 4th religion was included

Has anyone looked at how the Ai copes with religion? I don't think the AI destoy's existing buildings, so if the 'wrong' religions temple is built before a region is conquered, conquest & conversion will just result in increasing unrest & prevent access to superior units / benefits.

we've tried altering temple effects to automatically change effects in EDB
ie:

temple_of_farming_large_temple requires factions { carthaginian, } 
 {
 capability
 {
 happiness_bonus bonus 3
 farming_level bonus 3
 law_bonus bonus 2
 religious_belief believer 4 requires factions { carthage, }
 religious_belief pagan 4 requires not factions { carthage, }
 }

which was for a specific play as carthage mod....

Am wondering if something like this is needed to adapt all the conversion factors and recruitment conditionals for the AI factions, if multiple temples / religions are used, to prevent them being handicapped.

Speaking of buildings and religious effects: does anyone know if the AI is smart enough to destroy a building that gives it negative effects?

As you guys point out, and from what I've experienced myself on numerous occasions in SP campaigns, is that the AI will never pull down a single building once it sacks a settlement. Obviously things would be much simpler if the AI was designed to assess the religious situation and do whatever is best depending on the situation in the settlement, be it to retain the religious building, or to pull it down.

The way BI's triggers (for religious traits) have been coded suggests that they were designed for an AI that would not destroy buildings. For example:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger zoroastrians_battleforge_temple
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

    Condition Trait Zoroastrian >= 1
          and EndedInSettlement
          and RemainingMPPercentage = 100
          and SettlementBuildingExists >= temple_of_battleforge_temple

    Affects HatesPagan  1  Chance  2 
    Affects ZoroastrianPiety  1  Chance  2 
    Affects ZoroastrianDisillusion  1  Chance  1

The inclusion (and possibility) of the ZoroastrianPiety will give benefit to the AI which retains the battleforge temple (or greater). In time, this would probably assist the conversion strengths in favour of Zoroastrianism because the ZoroastrianPiety trait improves the conversion effects (and other areas) in its various increments. However, other factors would certainly come into play, such as the religious build-ups of neighbouring provinces for example.

[Makanyane]

The inclusion (and possibility) of the ZoroastrianPiety will give benefit to the AI which retains the battleforge temple (or greater). In time, this would probably assist the conversion strengths in favour of Zoroastrianism because the ZoroastrianPiety trait improves the conversion effects (and other areas) in its various increments. However, other factors would certainly come into play, such as the religious build-ups of neighbouring provinces for example.

But isn't the problem that whilst the battleforge temple is retained it over-rides the leader / faction leaders religion to set the official religion for the settlement to pagan - so that if leaders / neighbouring regions do increase the conversion to zoroastrianism you eventually end up with a pagan settlement with 100% unrest due to Zoroastrianism.

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Tbh, I haven't much extensive experience with BI's religious influences. The only campaign I completed was a Roxolani one (VH / VH), soon after BI was released, and that's about it. S'pose I would've seen the in's and out's if I'd played a WRE, ERE, Sassanid etc campaign and experienced such results first hand, but otherwise I'm reliant upon the judgements made by others in such areas.

At the end of the day, the AI is can only work to its limitations. Traits and triggers could be setup to help the AI as much as possible, but it depends entirely on the AI's actions on the campaign map, and more often than not these are predictable.

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Attempting to port over BI's religions has proved more complex than first imagined. Here's a topic illustrating my experiences:

Rebel Army Stacks Not Appearing?

The omission of all rebel army stacks appears to be the bridge too far. It would've been good to take advantage of BI's religious features, but looking at it from another perspective (and from suggestions already made), the religious setting in RTW would result in a pagan monopoly. The other religions would probably struggle to gain a foothold anyway, unless conversion factors were skewed in their favour.

Tbh though, I'd rather sacrifice BI's religious aspects and focus on requests and suggestions made by members that have downloaded and played the mod. Some of these have already been implemented to date, and there are still some which require tweaking / improving.

[snevets]

Paganism should be the same overall. The Romans and Greeks had the same gods, apart from a few special Italian ones. The Mediterranean civilisations basically identified with the same gods, with just different names. So, Judaism, perhaps Zoroastrianism (not sure about that) and Paganism.

Actually they were originally very different- the Greek influence attempted to box the roman gods into greek equivalents, so they lost most of their original related myths and 'abilities'. The only one's that the romans retained individually were the deities so different from the greek ones they could not be assimilated- vespa etc. That struggle would be well represented with the bi religion systems.

[Rex_Pelasgorum]

Zamolxianism was a powerfull religion centered in Thracia...Emperor Trajan said that the belief in the teachings of the prophet-god Zamolxis was his greatest adversary when fighting against Dacia.

The zamolxianist zealotry was as strong as judaist one. Dacia and JUdaea are the single countryes conquered by the romans in which the native religion was destroyed and persecuted, and the temple profanated, and the religios elite hunted down.

Just read ancient historycall data about it.

Mithraism would be another good add... strong oriental religion even before the Christian era.