Classic Era start religion proposal

[Commodore]

So I've loved the current two Pitbosses I'm in with Classic Era starts, but the current fix for the uneven distribution of the three ancient-era religions in games with more than three players means that Classic Era starts are unplayable for games with >7 players, and it feels odd not to have religions in the early medieval techs. 

Pindicator and I were chatting about this, and we realized another solution for Classic Era starts would be to instead move Hinduism/Buddhism/Judaism up, rather than have the later religions down. Although any number of techs would work (including up to Future Tech if you just wanted to lower the number available in-game), looking at recent games the three Classic techs least researched are:
-Drama
-Alphabet
-Compass
All of which would make some sense as religious techs in a Classic Era mod. 

Anyone else have thoughts?

[Krill]

Works fine except for advanced start

[RefSteel]

So, making liberal use of metaphor and stretching things a little, maybe Buddhism at Compass, Hinduism at Drama, and Judaism at Alphabet?

Should the mod provide a Missionary to the first-researcher the way it does for the other post-Classical religions? Or leave that as-is to not boost those three techs more than a holy city already would? (Or actually ... I don't know how the game decides which religions get a missionary; it might not be as easy to code one way or the other as I suppose....)

[superdeath]

id like better if a classic-era start ect doesnt HAVE those religions, and those that want a religion are now forced to go to some of the less-grabbed/bee-lined techs?

[scooter]

I like the idea as a clean solution for larger games. Classical is just straight-up superior to Ancient once the religion issue is fixed, and this basically does it. You do have to ban some additional things that are not really balanced with Classical in mind, but that's much easier to do.

id like better if a classic-era start ect doesnt HAVE those religions, and those that want a religion are now forced to go to some of the less-grabbed/bee-lined techs?

That is almost exactly what is being described here?

[T-hawk]

(Or actually ... I don't know how the game decides which religions get a missionary; it might not be as easy to code one way or the other as I suppose....)

It's easy to code. It's in Civ4ReligionInfo.xml, the fields for FreeUnitClass and iFreeUnits. (Interestingly, Buddhism/Hinduism/Judaism/etc are defined with the missionary for the free unit class but the number is 0 of them.)

That is almost exactly what is being described here?

He means for Buddhism/Hinduism/Judaism to not be in the game at all, so if you want a religion you have to go to one of the less-grabbed techs for one of the later religions as usual.

[superdeath]

T-hawk has it right.

[Dreylin]

It feels like having 7 religions in the game is better than just 4 - particularly since would be intended to address larger games. I wonder if the current proposal doesn't bunch all the religions up into too close an area of the tech tree though; maybe we could find 1-2 spots deeper in the tree past Divine Right to add them?

Looking at the Prophet Bulb list, Civil Service is higher than Philosophy, and Printing Press is only 1 spot behind, so they might make decent options.

[xist10]

Maybe try something like you implemented corps in CtH ?
Every one get a missionary and only the first researcher gets the holy site ? And maybe remove the holy site of the reli tech is part of the start techs ?

[Cornflakes]

Another option would be to make just one religion ancient era but remove the shrine, remove the culture, and remove the free spread chance (this can all be done in the XML). Then everyone will get that free-but-nerfed religion on T5 in order to unlock religious civics. A self founded religion later on would have additional benefits compared to the free religion, but the free religion as a backup would reduce the incentive for multiple players to immediately coinflip for a religion with their first tech.