Not being able to kick out priests of a religion

[fodder]

.. there really isn't any point in doing half arse heretic without going the whole schism thingy or priest centric following. because they'll have to do it again later on.

a quick boot is a band aid.

[Geronus]

.. there really isn't any point in doing half arse heretic without going the whole schism thingy or priest centric following. because they'll have to do it again later on.

a quick boot is a band aid.

My point exactly.

[Anaris]

.. there really isn't any point in doing half arse heretic without going the whole schism thingy or priest centric following. because they'll have to do it again later on.

a quick boot is a band aid.

That's not true at all.

There are situations where it would be perfectly appropriate to excommunicate a priest, where the priest in question is not trying to set up his own splinter sect of the church.

[Geronus]

That's not true at all.

There are situations where it would be perfectly appropriate to excommunicate a priest, where the priest in question is not trying to set up his own splinter sect of the church.

Maybe I misunderstood fodder then. My point, again, is rather than thinking we need to levy punishments on religions that want to kick out a priest, let's implement a balanced way for them to do it now and save the more complex mechanics for when real schisms come along. No point in getting half-way there now, especially if it's done in a punitive manner.

[fodder]

2 sides of the same coin surely. if followers follow a particular priest, then you boot him, he'll have a chance of taking his flock with him.

simply excommunicate a notable priest and expect no loss of flock? hah!
if it's a priest of no following, then he will take a couple of hundred of followers at most. basically no loss.

it does not matter whether the priest is trying to set up anything. if he doesn't fancy going on after the boot, then let it lapse. you as elder should not be allowed to dictate whether he wants to split or not. don't want a big split? convert his followers before booting him.

put another way, unless the band aid is like a 5 minute job, why waste all the effort, when you can wait a few more months (well.. and hope it's not 1-2 years)

[Anaris]

2 sides of the same coin surely. if followers follow a particular priest, then you boot him, he'll have a chance of taking his flock with him.

simply excommunicate a notable priest and expect no loss of flock? hah!
if it's a priest of no following, then he will take a couple of hundred of followers at most. basically no loss.

it does not matter whether the priest is trying to set up anything. if he doesn't fancy going on after the boot, then let it lapse. you as elder should not be allowed to dictate whether he wants to split or not. don't want a big split? convert his followers before booting him.

You are assuming that any schism mechanic will, in fact, assign peasant followers to individual priests. That's a huge assumption.

put another way, unless the band aid is like a 5 minute job, why waste all the effort, when you can wait a few more months (well.. and hope it's not 1-2 years)

It might well be another year or more. No way to tell at this point.

[Foundation]

I'm not gonna close this thread though it's gotten off topic, but as Tom's noted, someone will have to come forward and make very simple feature requests for these discussions to have any real impact.

Discussions like these belong on this Development forum, specific features belong on the Feature Request subforum, but do not expect the dev team to take every idea and modification into consideration on this parent board.

[Telrunya]

Hmm, so maybe some kind of Exile option for Religions, with the usual contest of wills. Not sure how that would work though.

[fodder]

You are assuming that any schism mechanic will, in fact, assign peasant followers to individual priests. That's a huge assumption.

not so much assumption but rather something that makes sense.

---
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.

[Chenier]

not so much assumption but rather something that makes sense.

---
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.

[JPierreD]

I'm not gonna close this thread though it's gotten off topic, but as Tom's noted, someone will have to come forward and make very simple feature requests for these discussions to have any real impact.

The thread started with that, but then had many other ideas. I'll try to sum up those I remember as simple ones:
a) Allow expelling a Priest if all the Elders agree.
b) Impose a penalty in number of followers for the expulsion.
c) An Elder can call an exile/ban/excommunication procedure which takes a week (the time for people to auto-pause), at the term of which if he managed enough support the Priest is expelled, and if not the Elder himself is booted (or add any other penalty). Perhaps the one expelled cannot join the religion in X time.

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.

This has been stated more than once before by Tom that was not going to happen.

[pcw27]

You mean a simple proposal like this?

Why should there be a whole complicated mechanic for this? If someone wants to play a Martin Luther they should found a new religion. If they can't get a single region lord on board (or if they're not a region lord themselves) then their doctrine clearly isn't powerful enough to gather followers.

If a spy infiltrates a religion there should be an option to ban them from receiving messages from the religion. It shouldn't be very difficult for church leaders to say "hey, that guy's a spy, stop sending him our mail". Infiltrating a religion can be a legitimate role played action, but to suggest that spying should grant them a lifetime supply of free intelligence is ludicrous. Let them have the ability to send messages to the faith which should limit the Churches ability to use this as a way to summarily silence descent.

[Psyche]

The main issue I've read that doesn't relate to schisms is that people bring in priests as spies and saboteurs.

A solution that doesn't seem hard to code, and more of a tweak:

Make it so that Aspirant ranked priests can only Preach and Pray for Signs.  Some features are already only available to Elders after promotion.  By demotion it would act similar to how Exiles work in a realm heirarchy.

Have a priests that's a pain in the ass?  Demote him to aspirant so he can't do any negative actions.  Worried about spies?  Send messages to full members only.  It's not like if you're truely worried about spies that you aren't already doing this anyways, since ANYONE can join ANY guild so long as they're not trying to join a second religion simultaneously.

[JPierreD]

Have a priests that's a pain in the ass?  Demote him to aspirant so he can't do any negative actions.  Worried about spies?  Send messages to full members only.  It's not like if you're truely worried about spies that you aren't already doing this anyways, since ANYONE can join ANY guild so long as they're not trying to join a second religion simultaneously.

This is so far the solution I've liked the most.

[pcw27]

Yeah I'd support this option as well.