Hello friends! Let us begin this week with some exciting news: 0.8.3 is on its way! I have been working on it for the last couple of months and – unless it contains some kind of monstrous bug I need to fix with a quick 0.8.3a – this will be the final release in the 0.8 sequence. Alongside some continued bug-fixing its main new thing is that it contains 3 new policies, one of which is a new religious preference called “cultism”. This is one that appeared years ago before I’d really fleshed anything out, disappeared because it wasn’t doing anything, but is now coming back, because I’ve found a way to make it work.
Essentially this religious policy doesn’t spawn churches or cathedrals or whatever, but instead private (or public) shrines, inspired by Roman sacella, in various places such as parks, or in city districts, or in homes, important public buildings, and so forth. Each civilization will have a number of cults that might worship anything from particular sites or architecture, to particular nature phenomena, to animals or plants. Some of these I don’t want to give away just yet, since they speak to another future feature, but to give an example of the animal variants, if the “Greater Scrabbling Ground-Beetle” is a particularly common insect in that area, than it might well be the insect worshipped by the cult, and if the “Hissing Blue-Snake” is something the people of Civilization X are particularly aware of, then of course that might be the specific creature the cult worships. They might also worship castles or parks or planets or the sun, and also a number of other things that I’ll talk about more at some later point.
As part of this I’ve created a lovely new generation algorithm for the cult shrines. Here are some examples!
As with so much they reflect the aesthetics of the civilization that spawned them, but also of course the thing being worshipped, so clockwise from top-left, these come from nations that like square, octagonal, cross, and diamond aesthetics, and these people worship the moon, castles, mountains, and forests. This of course also brings with it lots of new conversation options and so forth for NPCs, which I’m working on finishing off at the moment – and I’m hoping to release 0.8.3 before the end of May, or if not, then right at the start of June. See you all soon!
Amazing! I hope that the fact that cultists will be able to worship certain planets will eventually bring back the solar system generation!
You know Pavel – it probably will… 😉
Heck yeah! Very happy to hear that 😀
Keep up the good work!
Thanks Roberto! 🙂
Exciting! The religion generation is one of my favorite parts of URR, and I think this particular religious structure (proper cults that aren’t disorganized goons) is underrepresented in fiction. Can’t wait to see it in action!
Thanks Kevin! I’m just working on getting the shrines to appear in appropriate areas in the civs (e.g. in homes, in parks, and so forth) and then I think this part of 0.8.3 will be ready to go.
That’s very cool! That sounds like a nice extra bit of variety that can give quite a different feel to the religions. I love the shrines, as well, very intriguing!
If I can be extremely nitpicky for a moment, if you look at the top right shrine from the octagonal preference nation, you can see on the top left that the front of the shrine is horizontal first, and the backdrop behind it goes vertical first. I happened to notice that, and now I can’t stop noticing it—perhaps that’s an easy fix? I apologize for the hairsplitting; they really do look good!
Thanks Vincent! I really appreciate the feedback :). As for the horizontal / vertical issue… I’ve had a look and I honestly can’t spot the error you’re pointing out. Could you possibly circle it in an image and upload it and send it to me? I just can’t see the error. Thanks! 🙂
This is such an interesting idea! I particularly like the generated shrines. They look like actual artifacts one might uncover in an ancient buried city.
Thanks for continuing to develop URR — as another commentator mentioned, solar system generation would be amazing.
Thanks crowbar! Glad you like them :). Another update is going out today, and another release should be coming out in the very near future. Beyond that I’m hoping to have something bigger out by the end of 2021, all being well 🙂