not so much assumption but rather something that makes sense.
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for the band aid...
what exactly are you trying to prevent?
someone looking up locations of temples - they are not really hidden. anyone passing by would see it. you can look up every region in your realm too. tedious. need chums from other realms... <---don't bother.
someone using message list of religion (to find members, or whatever)... <--- hidden ranks?
someone preaching to peasants / influencing them
building shrines to - 1)waste your global treasury 2)annoy other realm/religion
knocking down shrines?
anything else?
a quick boot is no good.. imagine this.. there's a priest who did all the preaching and gathering followers. someone else came in as elder and boots him and the priest ends up with nothing? doesn't make sense.
I have a hard time to follow what you are trying to say with that post.
If a priest did all of this work, and then "someone else came in as elder and boots him", then that's kinda the priest's fault for not demanding to be made an elder himself. If he asks for no reconnaissance, than why should he expect some when he gets booted? Besides, nobody boots out priests without serious motive. If the threat only resurfaces now, it's because it's never really been an issue yet, mostly because people did not know how this worked (and thus no one tried to abuse it). A priest promotes your faith, and they are usually hard to come by. If a religion wants to boot a priest, then it's because the priest really deserves it.
Honestly, the best way to proceed is to simply allow religion elders to kick out priests like any other members, and to then, later when time is available, make a better code to make it a bit more difficult. Sure, it'd be best if there were some consequences to such a drastic act, but no consequences is already a hell of a lot better than no possibility to kick them out.
As for the other things you mention:
Shrines: they cost the priest 50 gold a shot, minimum. Sure they can be a drain, but the cost to the priest and to benefits to the religion means this is the least optimal way of griefing one can think of. Thus, not really a concern.
Member list: If we want to encourage "outside the box" religions, then I'd make it so that only full members can see the names of all other religion members. I'd do the same with guilds, too. But I don't consider this to have such an impact that it warrant anything higher than a low priority project.
Temple list: Full members only. Knowing where the temples of the enemy faith are is incredibly strategic information if you want to go to war against that church, since no temple = no religion. I've had this used against enemies of my faith, and I consider that if I did the same thing I'd have a considerable advantage to go destroy competing faiths. But I consider this abuse. The impacts of this are much greater than the member list, so I'd consider this to be a greater priority.
But these flaws with religion/guilds are nothing compared to the inability to kick out priests and to demote members to a rank with a lower maximum debt than the member's current debt. Especially the priest one.
