Setting a settlement's religion

[CirdanDharix]

As far as I can tell, a settlement's official religion is determined by what religion conversion buildings are present--i.e., if I knock down a mosque to build a church, the settlement will become officially Christian, and if the population are still massively Muslim, I'm in for trouble.

However, this is not necessarily possible for all factions in all settlements--I recently took Sardinia as the Zirids, and Cagliari is Pagan--with a population of Muslims and Christians. Worse, I put a mudjahid FM with a bunch of ancillaries and traits that add to Muslim conversion in charge, but since I can't build a building that gives Islamic conversion, when the settlement revolted it was mainly because "Islam is causing troubles"--in other words, the local Muslims object to being ruled by a Muslim power:hmmm:.

IMO, religious buildings should be buildable in all provinces without restrictions, and the Muslims should be given a building that can be built in less than six turns (three years!) to allow them to set the official religion of captured settlements.

[DaVinci]

Well, this is the historical-realism design. Sardinia at this time wasn't anymore dominated by Saracen influence, but still the cultural islamic influence is existent.
But, you won't have the ability to construct a mosque there - those regions will always be anger-regions, if they belong to your victory goals
You can, if you want change this by yourself with the file descr_regions hidden_resources codes (look into the export_descr_buildings file what is needed there). Nonetheless you would change the intended campaign design.

[CirdanDharix]

So, basically, you're saying that because the Muslims were losing out during this timeframe, they're not allowed to expand into new areas or reconquer lost ones? It's realistic enough, since history doesn't just depend on the fall of the dice, but to much of a straight-jacket on gameplay, in my opinion. Plus, I'd say it's doing things "the wrong way", since it doesn't represents the reasons why the Islamic conquest was being reversed in the Northwestern Mediterranean, it only shows the effects.

P..S. I'd rather make my suggested changes in the EDB than add hidden resources, so that they apply in general. Moreover, IIRC I'd need to restart a campaign to make new hidden resources be taken into account.

[DaVinci]

You can't add hr's, as the slots are full. But you can change regions in descr_regions.txt, so they can construct mosques (you would just need to add the needed hr into the Sardinia region code, that can be found in edb in the mosque building lines). And yes, those changes are not saved game compatible.

And else, this is your personal opinion. ChivTW has this design since 2006 and there never a lot people who complained about this pretty unique approach. Understand this as a part of the chiv-like unique trademarks, if you like it, is your decision. Nobody is forced to play this mod, and the mod design is certainly not much of the mainstream that can be found in this regard in other mods. The mod design mirrors in the first place my personal taste of historical play, and i won't ever change things against this approach, although i did a lot adjustments due to player wishes, as a lot of original codes were much more restricting in older versions - but this what you request now, is out of question for me, sorry. Not at least, those special codes serve also for the AI campaign balancing, and always in the context of historical-realism design.

[DaVinci]

So, basically, you're saying that because the Muslims were losing out during this timeframe, they're not allowed to expand into new areas or reconquer lost ones? It's realistic enough, since history doesn't just depend on the fall of the dice, but to much of a straight-jacket on gameplay, in my opinion. Plus, I'd say it's doing things "the wrong way", since it doesn't represents the reasons why the Islamic conquest was being reversed in the Northwestern Mediterranean, it only shows the effects.

P..S. I'd rather make my suggested changes in the EDB than add hidden resources, so that they apply in general. Moreover, IIRC I'd need to restart a campaign to make new hidden resources be taken into account.

Bold parts:
1. No, wrong. They are allowed to expand into such regions, but it is just harder to hold them calm via those special codes.
2. No, wrong. It is what it is. Codes that "help to reflect" the history of the timeframe to a certain degree, and that a player can feel a bit the widstand in certain regions.

You should remember, that the game engine cannot mirror history fully. Correct is, that the "what-if" factor is limited to a certain degree in this mod design. But actually only to a degree, because you can always try to conquer the world, but it's just harder than in other mods or even vanilla to calm down foreign areas.

I think you won't find much RTW mods, that are more historical accurate than ChivTW throughout the whole campaign, and not just only at the start of the campaign, and so also more challenging throughout the whole campaign in addition/consideration with the whole mod design (not only the historical-realism content, but also pure special coding).

[Alavaria]

I've seen that happen before. Official religion was Islam, though the people had all converted to Christianity. I think those two settlements were basically lost causes for serious development, so I put in Martial Law - made sure to destroy all the unit producing buildings I could and basically made those unconverted settlements into wastelands of military oppression.

law_bonus bonus 10
population_growth_bonus bonus -190
population_health_bonus bonus -19
taxable_income_bonus bonus -90
happiness_bonus bonus -2

I believe you can depopulate the settlement a lot, keep low taxes (large pop growth penalty so they still don't grow) and keep a few mlitary units for 80% garrison. Doesn't take too many people once you've depopulated the city. Initially, though, I did use one of the few governors with some Influence to help keep everything under wraps. Won't make much money, but that's just the way it is

I must say though, given that everyone in the settlement, the governor and the faction leader are all Christian, it's funny the people insist on having paganism as the official religion and will riot because of it o_O. Similarly, "Sardinia at this time wasn't anymore dominated by Saracen influence" even though it's already converted to a 100% Muslim population. Civilians are weird.

Rather than change the hidden resources to allow you to build your mosques, can't you just edit the descr_buildings to remove the hidden resource requirement? That should let you build it everywhere and also be save-compatible.

[DaVinci]

edit the descr_buildings to remove the hidden resource requirement? That should let you build it everywhere and also be save-compatible.

...that's correct. But where will you start with such changes and end? The whole concept is based on ZoC (zones of construction) and ZoR (zones of recruitment). If you do such changes you'll change just one of the backgrounds of the mod.

Of course you all are free to do that.
But then please also consider: do not count with support, as we can give only senseful support to an unmodified version.

A better alternative would be nearly, if you, in case there are more players who prefer a vanilla playground with ChivTW, that you (or just one who is capable to do that properly) just provide a sitemodded ChivTW version with alternative edb (tech-tree) etc. - release it in the fan-contribution subforum (now calling 'Free Mod Projects'), and discuss there.

[Alavaria]

I didn't know something like that *counts* as a mod, but I was just suggesting something easier and more save-game compatible than editing regions. Goodness knows it probably isn't too difficult to look for and change, but I don't think it's game breaking or anything.
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Oh, I do remember one thing though - I believe that in one (or two) cases, putting Martial Law actually changed the religion to the one I wanted. I think it's because that "building" also has an effect on religious conversion rates, though I have not tried it with the latest Chiv, so I don't know if it's still the case.

I also did not "End Martial Law" (because the computer took back those settlements) so I don't know if doing so might change it back to the (undesired) religion.

[Sun Devil]

The one annoying thing about religion is sometimes things will go to pagan (like if I destroy the current religious infrastructure), but when I begin building Christian things it still doesnt switch to Christianity right away, but stay pagan, which is annoying in Christian regions.

[Alavaria]

Hmm, I believe that might be because your Castle/Center of Oppression building has a positive effect on Paganism/Non-Conformism conversion. I guess it acts like a religious structure or something? Or perhaps it defaults to a region's starting religion, I don't know.

[DaVinci]

Lot of confusion here

Some points:

- Paganism is rendered in ChivTW not only as paganism in the pure sense. It is rendered as non-conformation, means a not real converted region/culture. The belief in those regions should be understood as a mixture of ie. paganism, christianity (of several branches!), islamism, judaism, etc. what you want and can imagine for the medieval times.
- It is historically not true, that a region, which was eventually "official" ie. a christian region, was in fact a christian region, despite that the ruler of a region or the official church was ie. christian ... and think of the several christian branches or several islamic branches!

So, to reflect those things, the tech-tree and traits mechanisms are specially coded. Only the most home regions of a faction have no big issues to being and keep their home belief, so to say. In bordering regions or "non-civilised" (non-missionared, ie. baltic and steppe regions), you will always have a good task to convert, but also at the edges between christianity and islam, it is not easy to make a belief as official function for a settlement.

[Alavaria]

In game terms, what exactly defines a settlement's official religion? I don't have the BI manual handy, but in any case, it could have been changed since you modded stuff.

And yeah, the - 100% drop in public order when everyone is one religion and the official religion is another can be kind of annoying, I guess. Hold them more to deny the enemy (or victory objectives).

[DaVinci]

In game terms, what exactly defines a settlement's official religion?

In the last consequence a core building, if you can't change that capability by other buildings with belief capabilities.
This is why you get unrest points when the ruling character(s) have another belief as the one of the decisive building that determines the indicated settlement belief.

You bring me to an idea

I'll add a belief conversion building that can overthrow any odds and will enrich the whole religious content of the mod ... hmmm, any ideas how it shall be called ... missionary-campaign ... pogrom ... ? ... any more thoughts?
In any case it will have a long construction time and also not little costs, and will be placed into the second last or last tier.

Oh, and please tell me a few examples where (factions/regions/settlement core tier) you have experienced the above stated "odds".

[Alavaria]

If there's something that we can use to change it, that would be nice Would allow me to make use of the, uh, "concentration camp settlements".
Something like 10 turns/10,000 coins? (Prevent the computer from building it too - since the AI hardly has problems holding any city, that I've seen.)

If you make it last tier, it might be more than just a little annoying to build a settlement up to that point, and build the final castle. Second last sounds fair enough. (But once the castle is up, it might be easier to let it rebel once or twice to enslave it's population down from 12K to 3K)

[DaVinci]

Quoting my self

Oh, and please tell me a few examples where (factions/regions/settlement core tier) you have experienced the above stated "odds".

Still i would be thankful for a few example regions where your said "odds" occur most frequently.

I eventually add such a "building" to the martial law string without the positive/negative capabilities, and is available after the last "end of martial law" - description would be something like "Cultural and religious unrest is calmed by far. The region's population is conformed in majority, either by missionaries or by sword. A pieceful time is possible from now on."
It'll have a unique big picture, too.

[Alavaria]

So basically, wherever you can't build your churches, etc, the settlement's main building makes the official religion whatever your faction is *not*.

Oh, after the end of the final martial law... rather inconvenient to build though all those levels, but then again it should be (since you're kind of buying a settlement that's going to be useful) so sure!
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Fair enough to say the city people hate everyone outside who is presumably not converted and hiding in their woods/fields and outnumbering them by a fair margin. Pity it isn't possible to just wholesale slaughter *everyone* (though it'd give that annoying Bloody trait that decreases troop morale ... youch)

[DaVinci]

You'd need to ask CirdanDharix since he seems to have mentioned it first.

I did, two versions back, notice that the two Moorish settlements closest to Aragorn's starting position were like that (but as I mentioned, Martial Law of all things seemed to work). I believe in the last version, there was one rebel city that I took as Bohemia near the top of their continent that was also fully christian (thanks to region leakage) but I couldn't build churches, etc. I'm going with Aragorn again in this version, but I held back on getting those Moor settlements as I didn't imagine it would be worth the effort. I should try, though.

In general, I think you can convert a region's population, but not their official religion if you can't build churches/etc. They'll still convert due to the region leak, especially if you destroyed whatever religous building was there initially. Family members, too. A FM has 5% convert, and I think I once saw my Faction Leader also get crusader for another 15%. If you siege for a few turns, the region's population converts really fast.

That's not the point now. As i described it is the core building (in this mod) that determines the settlement's official belief in the last consequence (in regions where no church or mosque is possible), even if the population is seemingly converted due to characters, martial law or other buildings and neighborhood influence, you'll see not the same "official" belief for the settlement in those certain regions.

In game terms (for the imagination), that means for example that the native (subjugated) administration-people in the whole region (understand this not only for the capital-settlement) is finally conformed, just after the majority of the population accepts the new belief and rules set by the occupants ... ie. the communal-chieftains, local masters and clan chiefs and whatever local rulers, are finally missionared or have been put to the sword (what was very often the case).
Understood?

However, i'll add the "building", no problem. Is done in short time. But that means still, in those regions you need to go through the hard way with the former martial law phases, before you "conform" the region entirely. I think this makes a lot sense: at the end you can have a pieceful region in formerly religious caused unruly regions, and this is then also official accepted (viewable via the settlement indicator = "official" belief). Also to understand as ~ "subjugation completed".

Thanks for the input, all!

[CirdanDharix]

I had a long post that was eaten by the forums logging me out.

Anyway, I was suggesting that it would be more realistic to change a settlement's religion in 2-3 phases:
--Declare the state religion. Cheap and fast build; gives just enough conversion to override the core building and change official religion, but causes significant unrest.
--Mass conversion. Expensive and long to build, but gives very high conversion and removes the unrest penalty, at the expense of a penalty to population growth (representing massacres/mass exodus).
--Possibly colonisation/repopulation (reserved for the Baltic Crusade area?). Expensive, but worthwhile bonii to pop growth, public order and religious conversion .

[DaVinci]

Good points. Just another approach that would be feasable of course.
I'll stick with the existing plus the new added building, otherwise i would have too much work to change the whole issue

[Bull3pr00f de Bodemloze]

I had a long post that was eaten by the forums logging me out.

Anyway, I was suggesting that it would be more realistic to change a settlement's religion in 2-3 phases:
--Declare the state religion. Cheap and fast build; gives just enough conversion to override the core building and change official religion, but causes significant unrest.
--Mass conversion. Expensive and long to build, but gives very high conversion and removes the unrest penalty, at the expense of a penalty to population growth (representing massacres/mass exodus).
--Possibly colonisation/repopulation (reserved for the Baltic Crusade area?). Expensive, but worthwhile bonii to pop growth, public order and religious conversion .

that's a GREAT IDEA, it perfectly fits into the whole thing and makes everything better for people who don't want to turtle!