Sanguis Astroism

[Anaris]

What about elders who deliberatly sabotage the religion by making it so that nobody wants to be part of it anymore, eh?

Jonsu and Alaster took actions that would obviously hollow it out from within. Alaster even went about and kicked a bunch of people. I really don't see it any differently.

The true followers of the religion are those who oppose it being usurped and perverted. Not those who decide to go along with whatever clown was put at the top without anyone being consulted.

There is a substantial difference between making major changes in a religion's doctrine or political structure from the top, and simply doing your level best as a priest to turn peasants away from that religion and close down its temples.

If your character does not believe in Sanguis Astroism as it is currently structured, then he should no longer be part of it. The only reason you have for remaining in it is so that you can reduce the number of people believing in it—an act that is obviously antithetical to the actual goals of any religion—without having to do the work of setting up a competing religion, or run the risk of being attacked by the peasants you're trying to convert to a competing religion.

I don't care if the religion in question is Sanguis Astroism, the Blood Cult, or Yet Another Pointless State Religion. No one gets to pretend to be a believer or priest of any religion just to deliberately reduce the religion's following. Damaging the religion politically out of ambition and attempts to take control of it, even to change its doctrine to something they know would be disliked by a majority of its current followers, are a completely different matter.

[Eduardo Almighty]

Give it time.

I'll close your temples, and you can't stop me.

Sounds like Erik before a yellow message  8)

[Chenier]

There is a substantial difference between making major changes in a religion's doctrine or political structure from the top, and simply doing your level best as a priest to turn peasants away from that religion and close down its temples.

If your character does not believe in Sanguis Astroism as it is currently structured, then he should no longer be part of it. The only reason you have for remaining in it is so that you can reduce the number of people believing in it—an act that is obviously antithetical to the actual goals of any religion—without having to do the work of setting up a competing religion, or run the risk of being attacked by the peasants you're trying to convert to a competing religion.

I don't care if the religion in question is Sanguis Astroism, the Blood Cult, or Yet Another Pointless State Religion. No one gets to pretend to be a believer or priest of any religion just to deliberately reduce the religion's following. Damaging the religion politically out of ambition and attempts to take control of it, even to change its doctrine to something they know would be disliked by a majority of its current followers, are a completely different matter.

Every. Single. Faithful. has publicly opposed Alaster.

If the game won't handle schisms or give us tools to get rid of usurpers, then that's not the players' fault.

Enoch did not believe in SA. He was one of those, what do you call them again, spiritualists? He ran for leadership of SA, then put in the most hated heretic just to bring it down.

Enoch, Jonsu, Alaster took great power, without making any effort to improve the church, only to bring it down.

If you are going to tell me that that was more justified than a priest returning to the people he converted and telling them "you know what, the usurper in charge does not represent the teachings I told you", I call bull!@#$.

[Anaris]

Every. Single. Faithful. has publicly opposed Alaster.

Then they should all leave, and start a competing religion en masse.

If the game won't handle schisms or give us tools to get rid of usurpers, then that's not the players' fault.

Well, I've had plans for it for years, but I just haven't had time. Sorry.

That doesn't give you license to abuse game mechanics.

Enoch did not believe in SA. He was one of those, what do you call them again, spiritualists? He ran for leadership of SA, then put in the most hated heretic just to bring it down.

That's a political struggle. That's frustrating, and ugly, but as far as the rules are concerned, fine. There's a fundamental difference between that and abusing the mechanics of a priest to deliberately deconvert believers.

If you are going to tell me that that was more justified than a priest returning to the people he converted and telling them "you know what, the usurper in charge does not represent the teachings I told you", I call bull!@#$.

You can call bull!@#$ all you want, but that's exactly what I'm telling you.

If your character does not believe in the teachings of the religion he is a priest of, then he is no longer truly a priest of that religion, and should simply leave it.

[Chenier]

Then they should all leave, and start a competing religion en masse.

Well, I've had plans for it for years, but I just haven't had time. Sorry.

That doesn't give you license to abuse game mechanics.

That's a political struggle. That's frustrating, and ugly, but as far as the rules are concerned, fine. There's a fundamental difference between that and abusing the mechanics of a priest to deliberately deconvert believers.

You can call bull!@#$ all you want, but that's exactly what I'm telling you.

If your character does not believe in the teachings of the religion he is a priest of, then he is no longer truly a priest of that religion, and should simply leave it.

Almost every priest action is a pointless deconvert action. ALWAYS.

There is no "deconvert"-named button. There is only influence follower buttons. And there is plenty of reason to influence followers against an enemy nation that houses a competing church. Now, if that happens to deconvert the region, that's just because of how !@#$ing pointless the priest game is. Alaster opposes ESA, which is housed in Luria Nova. That's the !@#$ing irony of it. I could be Alaster's most loyal follower, and conduct precisely the same acts as I do as his opposer.

Piousness is independant of whatever lame gamey shennenigans the guild leaders have. Players are not to be hostages to whatever clowns abuse of the ridiculous guild mechanics religions use.

And every single antecedent has backed up the IR of choosing one's class, regardless of how stupid the contexts were. To decide otherwise now, to overwrite the IRs on such an arbitrary basis, would completely contradict all precedents. A ton of characters became priests for the sole purpose of being immune to expulsion all while abusing of this protection. Their right to remain priests has always been defended and all titan complaints against them has always failed.

[Anaris]

Almost every priest action is a pointless deconvert action. ALWAYS.

Ah...no. First of all, there's that little option labeled "Preach."

Second of all, intent counts. If you're coming straight out and admitting—as you, and several others are—that you are deliberately using the Influence options in order to reduce the number of followers of the religion, that's pretty damning evidence that you're abusing game mechanics.

And every single antecedent has backed up the IR of choosing one's class, regardless of how stupid the contexts were. To decide otherwise now, to overwrite the IRs on such an arbitrary basis, would completely contradict all precedents. A ton of characters became priests for the sole purpose of being immune to expulsion all while abusing of this protection. Their right to remain priests has always been defended and all titan complaints against them has always failed.

You're both welcome and encouraged to remain a priest—once you have founded a new religion to be a priest of. There is no Inalienable Right to be a priest, or follower, of a particular religion.

[D`Este]

Fulco became a priest specifically to not get kicked, had never been one before as far as I can tell.

Machiavel has been a priest for years. Temples he's closed and peasants he deconverted were the ones he built and converted himself.

Fulco sided with the most hated heretic of the Church. Machiavel sided against an usurper placed in power by her.

Are you really going to claim you can't see a difference between these two cases?

I've always argued for priest power and protection within a church to be directly proportional to his contribution to it. And Machiavel has been a priest of SA longer than Alaster has been on Dwilight.

Well, Fulco became priest before the elders told him they wanted to kick him, after that he switched classes so that he could be kicked. So actually, yes, I see a difference, Fulco changed his class.

[Chenier]

Ah...no. First of all, there's that little option labeled "Preach."

Second of all, intent counts. If you're coming straight out and admitting—as you, and several others are—that you are deliberately using the Influence options in order to reduce the number of followers of the religion, that's pretty damning evidence that you're abusing game mechanics.

You're both welcome and encouraged to remain a priest—once you have founded a new religion to be a priest of. There is no Inalienable Right to be a priest, or follower, of a particular religion.

Using and "abusing" these game mechanics have the exact same results. That's how much priests suck. You lose hundreds of followers for a 1% effect, if lucky. Using them for their intended purpose has the same effect as using them for any other purpose.

If "Influence followers" isn't meant to be used as a rapid "deconvert" action, then maybe it shouldn't act that way? Because there is no way for that action to be useful at doing anything else than precisely that.

It would be increadily easy to code the mechanics so that one cannot easily deconvert a region. If you don't, then that's because it is intended that these actions result in huge follower loss, and thus using them to do so is quite plainly using them for their intended purpose. As I said, that's the irony of the situation: Alaster was the one pushing the most to have ESA declared evil, and the whole of SA was pretty much united against Luria Nova: Influencing followers to decrease sympathy to Luria Nova is totally in line with what someone loyal to Alaster could have wanted to do.

And you should know full well that intent is an absolute !@#$ criteria, because the only way it can be proved is if someone admits to it. To have a rule based on intent is to allow everyone to break it with impunity as long as they don't admit to it, while the less insidious who admit to it get crushed by titan action. Rules on intent don't favor fair play, they do the opposite. And that's why generally intent was said not to matter. It was considered to weight the sentence, not to determine the verdict.

And please, are you really going to claim now that the Dev team and Tom never cited the IR for the impossibility of players to deport priests or for religion elders to kick them out of the religion? Because that's exactly the reason that was given every time the issue came up. Only recently did you start admitting that "yea, maybe that should be changed". But you did not. The game mechanics are exactly the same now as they were then. And influencing followers to lower their numbers is insanely tame compared to everything else others got away with before.

[Anaris]

Using and "abusing" these game mechanics have the exact same results. That's how much priests suck. You lose hundreds of followers for a 1% effect, if lucky. Using them for their intended purpose has the same effect as using them for any other purpose.

If "Influence followers" isn't meant to be used as a rapid "deconvert" action, then maybe it shouldn't act that way? Because there is no way for that action to be useful at doing anything else than precisely that.

It would be increadily easy to code the mechanics so that one cannot easily deconvert a region. If you don't, then that's because it is intended that these actions result in huge follower loss, and thus using them to do so is quite plainly using them for their intended purpose. As I said, that's the irony of the situation: Alaster was the one pushing the most to have ESA declared evil, and the whole of SA was pretty much united against Luria Nova: Influencing followers to decrease sympathy to Luria Nova is totally in line with what someone loyal to Alaster could have wanted to do.

And you should know full well that intent is an absolute !@#$ criteria, because the only way it can be proved is if someone admits to it. To have a rule based on intent is to allow everyone to break it with impunity as long as they don't admit to it, while the less insidious who admit to it get crushed by titan action. Rules on intent don't favor fair play, they do the opposite. And that's why generally intent was said not to matter. It was considered to weight the sentence, not to determine the verdict.

Your entire argument seems to rest upon multiple faulty premises.

First, that intent does not matter. Sure, sometimes it's hard to divine. That doesn't mean we aren't allowed to try, and it absolutely does not mean that when people flat-out publicly state their intent to abuse game mechanics, we can't punish them for it.

Second, that a feature having an unintended, abusable side effect, or being poorly balanced, means that we want you to abuse it. Sorry, but no. I shouldn't even have to address this.

Third, that the fact that we know about that abusable aspect and have not yet changed it, means that we intend for that abusable aspect to remain. Have you noticed the state of dev work lately, Chenier?

If you really want me to fix the problem of being able to deconvert peasants too fast with that option, I'd be happy to simply remove the ability for priests to influence followers at all, and tell everyone exactly why.

And please, are you really going to claim now that the Dev team and Tom never cited the IR for the impossibility of players to deport priests or for religion elders to kick them out of the religion?

No, I'm not going to claim anything of the kind, but I have never agreed with that interpretation of the IRs. Tom and I had multiple arguments about it.

If he wants to come in here and state that a priest who is deliberately abusing the fact that influencing followers loses followers is not an abuse of game mechanics, and should be protected and allowed to do whatever the hell he wants, then that's up to him, but that's what it's going to take to change this, Dominic.

So go ahead. Go tell Tom you want to be able to be a priest who is telling peasants, "Don't follow this religion!" and still get all the advantages of the protections priests enjoy. See how far you get.

If it were up to me, I would have long ago changed the code to allow priests to be expelled from their religions. Probably alongside the schism mechanic, so that if they really wanted to remain priests, they could try their hand at being the head of a religion, but that would have taken a lot more time.

Infiltrators already get booted out of their class if they go rogue, by any means. I don't see any reason why priests should have an effective inalienable right to be a priest in the religion they're currently in.

[Chenier]

Honestly, you could remove "Influence followers" from priests, and it wouldn't be a nerf. Heck, it'd be a boon. That action sucks at everything else than sabotaging your own religion. The more "advanced" you get access to, the worse it gets.

A senior priest with 100 oratory fame can't cause more harm to a region than what it can naturally recover by itself at TC. He can't fix a region any more quickly than a newbie courtier who just started out. He can't increase or decrease sympathy any more than a newbie diplomat. The deaths from his mobs will likely go unnoticed and will undo themselves within days.

It's an awful ability.

By the way, Alaster is dead, so SA is now somewhat "unsurped". It can now return on its slow path to death.

[Antonine]

Honestly, you could remove "Influence followers" from priests, and it wouldn't be a nerf. Heck, it'd be a boon. That action sucks at everything else than sabotaging your own religion. The more "advanced" you get access to, the worse it gets.

A senior priest with 100 oratory fame can't cause more harm to a region than what it can naturally recover by itself at TC. He can't fix a region any more quickly than a newbie courtier who just started out. He can't increase or decrease sympathy any more than a newbie diplomat. The deaths from his mobs will likely go unnoticed and will undo themselves within days.

It's an awful ability.

By the way, Alaster is dead, so SA is now somewhat "unsurped". It can now return on its slow path to death.

This is complete nonsense. I can say first hand that influence followers can be an extremely powerful weapon (and occasional regional maintenance tool) when used correctly. It's really good at lowering enemy realm control, for example. And if you can't find something useful to do with that then the problem is with you rather than the mechanic not doing anything.

That being said, reducing the number of followers lost by using it wouldn't hurt.

[Chenier]

This is complete nonsense. I can say first hand that influence followers can be an extremely powerful weapon (and occasional regional maintenance tool) when used correctly. It's really good at lowering enemy realm control, for example. And if you can't find something useful to do with that then the problem is with you rather than the mechanic not doing anything.

That being said, reducing the number of followers lost by using it wouldn't hurt.

My experience is always the same with these abilities. Zero impact, huge cost. Every time. Different characters (all top skills in oratory), different continents, targets in different starting condition, always the same result. Always. I used to think it was powerful and feared enemy priests, but that's before I became experienced at playing a priest myself.

[Eduardo Almighty]

I used it... unh... three times. Too hard to get followers these days to lose a lot of them to have a boost. But for your "purposes", hell yeah! The easiest way to lose followers...

It's like years of work to convert them, then you use one option... they've gone.

[Chenier]

I used it... unh... three times. Too hard to get followers these days to lose a lot of them to have a boost. But for your "purposes", hell yeah! The easiest way to lose followers...

It's like years of work to convert them, then you use one option... they've gone.

I've used them in regions with large populations, over 95% following, large temples, top oratory skill and as an elder of the faith. Mobs would cause somewhat more deaths than in less-optimal situations, but otherwise no priest action did visible or lasting damage. So even if you'd get these followers, it wouldn't be any stronger than what you've seen yourself.