You see that some players put much time and effort in religion, role-play wise in-game and on the wiki. Religion has the potential to be a very interesting part of the game, yet it most cases it is just a silent guild you are part of to appease your peasants, or you aren't part of an organised religion at all. What does it really matter what faith you follow? From a day to day basis it has little use for your character. You notice that in the message group of most religions. It is silent. No one cares. Of course this is not true for all religions, but most of them. We need to revive those religions.
To this point, I wholeheartedly agree with you. With, of course, Sanguis Astroism being the sole exception.
Most religions are very silent shells, where nothing really happens. Even the biggest ones in the game, so far as I have experienced. And from what I have heard, this is pretty much universal. They have one or two people dedicated to it, and everyone else is a silent partner.
What is the value of a man's faith? How do we value a religion?
---snip---
So how much does a religion really matter to a charterer? Too little.
These are good questions. But they are also things that we cannot enforce in game mechanics. Some characters will believe very strongly, some weakly, others will not believe at all. Some will believe in whatever faith can promise them what they want.
Historically, the Church was a very important institution in medieval Europe. The Church was rich and powerful, and the pope's influence was greater than the influence of Kings. They were powerful and could command a whole continent to take up arms to 'defend' the faith in many holy crusades. There was much intrigue, because the stakes were usually very high. And for the common men, the church was there directive in moral and principle matters. That was also something that made the Church powerful, because they commanded the loyalty of the people.
At certain points in history, this is very true. At other times, this was not. The power of the church waxed and waned, depending on the relative power and influence of the pope and the various kings.
But you also cannot directly compare RL religions directly to BattleMaster religions. The situations are completely different. We don't have the situation where a single religion dominates the entire continent. If you did, you'd probably see that religion having a lot more influence and power.
In fact, I've gone on record and stated before that what we need is not game mechanics power for individual religions, but fewer religions in the first place. If you want a really good religion game, then what you need are two, maybe three, religions that control the entire island, and are evenly matched. (Maybe two each for EC/FEI, three for AT/BT, and four for Dwilight.) Then you'd have some good concentration of power, and a clearly defined goal of who to go after.
And, on top of that, you also need a set of leaders willing to actually use that power in a religious manner, and a group of people willing to play along with it. Look what happened when you assembled all that on Dwilight. You got a strong church with lots of secular power, willing to use that power to achieve its own goals, and a bunch of nobles that jumped when the prophet said jump.
Game mechanics alone will not make any particular religion in BattleMaster the equivalent of the Catholic church at the height of its power. It takes players to get together and allow the church to have that power. If you try to force it on people, then you will end up with a lot of what we had when religion first was implemented: Each realm having its own empty-shell state religion run by the realm, and all other religions outlawed.
Now, having said that...
I do agree with you that a few more options for religions to handle some specific circumstances, and perhaps allow them to have a bit more effect on the world in general, may be in order. Adding things on to the extent you are suggesting is, IMO, a mistake.
Taxes - Allow realms to choose wether or not to tax religions, or perhaps to tax only certain religions. More gold for religions with support of the realm which means more power. Also, it can create interesting intrigue between rulers and the Church's council.
Excellent idea. I fully support this. This information should also be publicly available to all nobles in the realm.
Excommunicate - make it an option to excommunicate someone besides kicking someone out. Excommunicated nobles cause civil unrest in religious regions. Depending on the % of followers in the region and the rank of the noble. A simple knight will cause some unrest in the region, a lord more, a duke will cause unrest in his duchy and a council member will cause unrest in the whole realm, and most strongly in the capital. As an excommunicated member, you can not leave the religion for at least 30 days or after paying some sort of ransom. Again, more intrigue.
Another good idea. Some kind of official Excommunication, which may also include forbidding them from rejoining, is a good idea. I like the idea of excommunicated lords/dukes generating problems in their regions if the region is high in followers of that faith.
The "can't leave for 30 days', though, I don't really understand. You've been excommunicated. You're no longer part of the religion.
Influence followers - When a noble priest tells the peasant to jump, he jumps. When he tells you to hate realm X and love realm Y, he will hate and love accordingly. This is already a feature, but seldomly used because the penalties are too high. If it takes me more than 100 days to convert 40% of a population (about 2500 people) from an evil religion to my own, I'll not hamper that slow progress by trying to influence the people and lose 300 followers again. It isn't realistic to abandon your faith like that. The Church was the main tool to influence the people. This makes religions actually useful and makes them desirable or not (for different people), which is interesting for the game. The duke wants to keep a good bond with the Church to make sure his peasants act as he commands. Not just statistics and role-play. I propose to minimize the penalties on influencing followers.
In general, the influence followers ability is pretty low-powered. The advent of diplomats/ambassadors (which I feel are WAAAAY overpowered to the point of being absurdly ridiculous) has made this option mostly pointless, and usually more damaging to the religion than the target. The only practical use for it is to help recover regions in core areas of the religion's power.
One additional thing that I think could really help:
Peasants should object to realm relations based on the religious beliefs of the various realms. Not based on state religions, but based on the amount of followers in the various regions/realms. For example: On EC, Westmoor is /heavy/ in Church of Humanity followers. Ibladesh was pure Church of Ibladesh. Both religions considered the other as Evil. But the two realms were
federated! wtf?! That's pure BS. In a situation like that, the peasants should have been rising up in open revolt daily, and twice on Sunday.
The peasants in a region should be influenced by a cross-reference of the dominant faith in the region, its views on other religions, the type of realm-based relations to other realms, and the dominant faith in that realm. It sounds complicated, but it's really not. It works like this, assuming the prior Westmoor/Ibladesh scenario:
1) Westmoor city is part of the realm of Westmoor.
2) Westmoor city has 90% CoH followers.
3) The realm of Westmoor is federated to Ibladesh.
4) The realm of Ibladesh consists of mainly CoI followers.
5) CoH considers CoI as evil.
6) The peasants in Westmoor city should have a declining sympathy toward Ibladesh.
7) As the sympathy toward Ibladesh drops, the people in Westmoor city should start grumbling and complaining about their federation. This mechanic already exists. It should be modified to include a religious component that takes the religious views into account.
The amount of the effect would be based on the type of relationship between the realms, the type of religious view, and the amount of followers in each region/realm. If there is no clear religious majority in either place, then you shouldn't have any strong reactions.
This could give religions some additional power in a political arena, and is based directly off of existing mechanisms. However, it doesn't give in to the idea of just giving priests another button to click to hold realms hostage with an overpowered option. It's an effectively passive option that is based on the presence of the religion alone.
Tim whipped together the basic stats for something like this once. IIRC, it didn't take too long to work out the raw data.
