Crusade

[Bedwyr]

That wouldn't be a bad thing, necessarily...You get some serious teeth in those religions.  And yeah, it might start all under the control of a few bigwigs, but things change.

[De-Legro]

That wouldn't be a bad thing, necessarily...You get some serious teeth in those religions.  And yeah, it might start all under the control of a few bigwigs, but things change.

I guess I expected they would be in the same mold as the majority of state religions though. Existing for no better reason then to allow crusades, with no other meaningful interaction.

[Bedwyr]

I guess I expected they would be in the same mold as the majority of state religions though. Existing for no better reason then to allow crusades, with no other meaningful interaction.

Yeah, but how long would that last?  Keeping a religion that powerful under control would not be easy, especially once ambitious types got attracted to it because of the power inherent there...

[De-Legro]

Yeah, but how long would that last?  Keeping a religion that powerful under control would not be easy, especially once ambitious types got attracted to it because of the power inherent there...

Probably as long as the realms involved want to keep it placid and useful I would think. Its not like we have had masses of people lining up to try and take over state religions.

[Psyche]

I think it could just be RPed, though it would be nice if RTOs/estates worked on testing.  There's an outstanding bug preventing them.

[Heq]

My thinking is that it allows for non-rulers to have an item to press for conflict.  One of the main depressors of conflict tends to be that rulers have the most to lose by war, but if High-ranking priests in a dominant (say 50% of the pop+) religion can declare an opposing state the target of a crusade, and there is then a penalty for not being at war, but a small benefit for being at war, it can really push sedentary rulers into action.

It also gives the powerful priests a lever over public policy.

[De-Legro]

My thinking is that it allows for non-rulers to have an item to press for conflict.  One of the main depressors of conflict tends to be that rulers have the most to lose by war, but if High-ranking priests in a dominant (say 50% of the pop+) religion can declare an opposing state the target of a crusade, and there is then a penalty for not being at war, but a small benefit for being at war, it can really push sedentary rulers into action.

It also gives the powerful priests a lever over public policy.

If your priest don't already have a lever over public policy, I would suggest they just aren't that powerful. My thinking is this moves religion away from being about converting Nobles and gathering strength through faithful nobility, to a game all about converting worthless scummy peasants. Crusades were often more about the prestige given to the nobility that formed the top commanding tier then anything to do with plans of the Church.

[Heq]

Battlemaster is all about the big themes and politics and wars in the middle ages (I believed someone called it MediPunk), one of the standard tropes is the firebrand preacher who declares a state ally evil incarnate.

So far as I see it the priest game should be a balance, one can either gain power by converting nobles or by converting a -lot- of peasants.  Both should be weapons of middling power, because through most of the middle ages the Church was an effective check on the powers of even the Emporer, whereas in BM one can just hand wave and say "Meh" if the religion followed by 95% of your peasantry excommunicates your realm.

[Indirik]

... in BM one can just hand wave and say "Meh" if the religion followed by 95% of your peasantry excommunicates your realm.

Umm... not if that religion cares to contest your rulership of those regions. And if they have the priests willing to help. A religion with 95% following and some good priests can cause major havoc.

[Chenier]

Who else can see well established alliance blocks suddenly all converting to the same religion so there next gang bang can be a crusade?

That would be a good thing, though. And I can think of a number of ways I could, if I had a cohort of active, willing, and ambitious people with me, exploit such power to make it have a mind of its own, with or without the founder's blessings.

[Gustav Kuriga]

My ass it would be a good thing. Gang bangs only drive people away from the game.

[Chenier]

My ass it would be a good thing. Gang bangs only drive people away from the game.

The gang bang happens regardless of religion.

If people did indeed do what was mentioned, it would be as a byproduct of the gangbang, not as a cause for it.

[De-Legro]

That would be a good thing, though. And I can think of a number of ways I could, if I had a cohort of active, willing, and ambitious people with me, exploit such power to make it have a mind of its own, with or without the founder's blessings.

If you had a cohort of willing, active and ambitious people you could exploit almost ANY existing power structure in the game. The problem being that such a thing is extremely rare these days.

Battlemaster is all about the big themes and politics and wars in the middle ages (I believed someone called it MediPunk), one of the standard tropes is the firebrand preacher who declares a state ally evil incarnate.

So far as I see it the priest game should be a balance, one can either gain power by converting nobles or by converting a -lot- of peasants.  Both should be weapons of middling power, because through most of the middle ages the Church was an effective check on the powers of even the Emporer, whereas in BM one can just hand wave and say "Meh" if the religion followed by 95% of your peasantry excommunicates your realm.

The priest game and religion at large has always been mostly a RP aspect to BM, and as I understand it this is by design. They were also not meant to replicate the power and control of the Catholic Church, though SA is doing a pretty good job of it anyway. I would think that if religions are already too scared to use the rather powerful feature they already have to influence politics and back up their faithful, they are hardly going to do so because we add one more button. Just as a Ruler in BM can be toppled rather easily by their nobility, thus creating a system where the Ruler should be courting powerful nobles to support them, the same holds true for religion, you want to throw around some religious weight, make sure you have the support.

Ask yourself how much sway would the Church have had if they couldn't threaten you with soured relations from the other Catholic Monarchs, and just look at England for an example of how powerless the Church could be if the Monarch didn't particularly care about the possible fallout.

[GoldPanda]

Right. We don't need more game mechanics and buttons with which to punish our realm-mates until they do what we say. The Judge has a "stick" to enforce realm laws and OOC game rules, and that's really sufficient. The game in general needs more carrots and fewer sticks.

If you want your realm-mates to do something, talk them into it.

[vonGenf]

We don't need more game mechanics and buttons with which to punish our realm-mates until they do what we say.

The original proposal was to add prestige bonuses in certain situations. How does that punish anyone?